


Biochemistry

by shuuvee



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Crack, Feelings, Fluff, M/M, Science, Some angst, Student!Minghao, TA!Joshua, Tons of biology/chemistry puns i'm sorry, side!junhan, side!meanie, vernkwan if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-03 00:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14557386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuuvee/pseuds/shuuvee
Summary: Mingyu decides it’s time to find Minghao a boyfriend. In Biochemistry Lab.Oh, by the way, his TA is kinda cute.





	1. He Can’t Possibly Be Gay

**Author's Note:**

> ~ This fic updates every other Sunday morning ~ Thanks to [bulletproof-bad-wolf](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletproof_bad_wolf/pseuds/bulletproof_bad_wolf) for proof-reading and suggestions! ~
> 
> You can follow me on [tumblr](http://dyegu.tumblr.com) if you want! I post a lot of Soohao :)

 

* * *

  
“Did you read the lab manual?”

“Nope.”

“Great.”

“Did you?”

“Minghao. Think about who you’re talking to.”

“Right. Maybe I should’ve chosen a different lab partner.”

Minghao shook his head. Mingyu wasn’t gonna be offended by his comment, but he was still beating himself up over it. Because if he knew anything about Mingyu, he knew that _any_ time _any_ thing worked for the rest of the semester, Mingyu would never ever let him live _any_ of it down. Science or otherwise.

“Minghao, I’m offended!” Mingyu feigned, stopping mid-pace in the science building to grab onto Minghao’s shoulders and keep him in place next to him. In the middle of the hallway. Mingyu, notoriously aloof of how other people might need to get around him, parked himself and Minghao without much effort. Minghao sometimes forgot how large Mingyu was as a person, his hands easily wrapping around his shoulders; Mingyu _always_ forgot how large he was, like a two-year-old golden retriever who still thinks he’s a puppy. Or blocks an entire hallway.

“Uh huh,” Minghao dismissed.

“Minghao. Hao. My fashionable emo best friend. Who else is going to find you a nice cute boy in our lab to turn that frown upside-down?”

Goddamnit Gyu. Minghao had to fight his usually expressionless face from perking up, fighting against a stupid, small, embarrassed smile that definitely was _not_ creeping across his face. It was an odd bubbly type of feeling -- getting set up on a date by your perpetually-matchmaking best friend.

“Other than me,” Mingyu added with a smile.

“Yeah, you and your _nerdy_ emo boyfriend.”

“Exactly.”

“-- _Excuse me_ ,” a random voice interjected.

Mingyu finally realized that he was, in fact, a large boy who obstructed most of the hallway with his body.

“Sorry,” he muttered, hands still planted on Minghao’s shoulder; he moved both of them over to the edge of the hallway at once. The girl stormed past them, clearly annoyed.

“If you think that you’re gonna find me the boy of my dreams in our 20-person biochemistry lab, then maybe I really do regret picking you as my lab partner.”

“Minghao, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. What better place than a biochemistry lab? We’ll help you find a little chemistry with some boy with dimples and a cute smile, and then maybe you’ll do a little biology with him on the side.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Minghao groaned, releasing himself from Mingyu’s grip and brushing past him to keep pressing ahead toward lab. Sometimes Mingyu was the actual worst, in the wingman-slash-best-friend sort of way. He should’ve known that his friend would transform _let’s-be-lab-partners-so-we-maybe-stand-a-chance-of-passing-this-class_ into _let’s-find-Minghao-a-hot-date-every-waking-second-of-lab_. Not that he was entirely against the concept, it was just that Mingyu’s delivery, his mechanism-of-action or whatever, was to be as completely and unabashedly ridiculous as possible.

Mingyu quickly caught up to him, walking lock-step with his perpetually single lab partner. Yes, perpetually. As in, this had been the undercurrent to their best-friendship for the past few months.

“You can be the mating type alpha and--”

“-- _Oh my god_ ,” Minghao protested, stopping Mingyu’s dumbass yeast mating type analogy before it got any cringier. “Stop with the genetics bullshit, I have PTSD. And I’m actually gagging right now.”

“Maybe your new boyfriend can help you with that gagging problem~” Mingyu sing-songed.

Minghao looked up at his friend, putting on his best death-glare face.

“What?” Mingyu complained, pretending to be all innocent and shit. “It wasn’t a genetics thing!”

“No, it was _worse_.” Minghao looked at the number next to the room they were coming up on, matching it up with his mental note of where they were gonna have lab for the rest of the semester. He quietly directed Mingyu, who was almost entirely focused on their conversation, into the room.

“Minghao, I _will_ find you a boyfriend,” Mingyu continued, oblivious to the fact that they were walking into a classroom. “One who will be happy to make like DNA helicase and unzip his jeans for you.”

“ _Gyu!_ ”

One thing that Mingyu perpetually lacked -- other than a healthy dose of shame -- was volume control. Minghao was pretty sure that the entire biochemistry lab, which was of course painfully quiet as they were walking in, heard Mingyu raving on about his very single best friend wanting to get in some boy’s pants. Minghao, meanwhile, had to fight the strong urge to run, cry, or scream. Or maybe all three.

“Um, hi,” their brunette lab instructor, Yoon Jeonghan, piped up. Minghao and his idiot best friend both turned around to face him; Minghao was 100% sure that he was blushing, the embarrassment from Mingyu’s comment openly betraying him. Jeonghan was holding a clipboard, probably with the class roster on it. He was in charge of making sure all the labs ran smoothly -- at least, that’s what he said at their first lecture.

“So I take it you two are lab partners?”

“Unfortunately,” Minghao spat out, earning a soft punch to the shoulder from Mingyu. Minghao just glared back. He would call Mingyu a little shit, but he was quite literally a big shit.

“And you are?”

“Last name, Kim. First name, Mingyu.”

“Xu Minghao.”

Jeonghan concentrated on his clipboard, checking off two names with blue ballpoint pen. He then turned to look around the room, which was probably about half-full at this point.

“Hmm, it looks like most of the lab benches in the back of the classroom are taken. How about you guys take that one?” Jeonghan suggested, pointing toward the lab bench that was right in the front, right where the TA would be for most of the lab.

Minghao was 99% sure this was Mingyu’s fault. There was very clearly a lab bench near the back that was open, but Mingyu just had to let it be known to the entire goddamn lab -- _and the lab instructor_ \-- that he was going to be the Problematic Lab Partner for the semester, meaning that Jeonghan felt contractually obligated to put them up front.

“This is your fault,” Minghao muttered once they were out of earshot of Jeonghan.

He had a feeling he’d be saying that a lot this semester.

* * *

  
“Five-hundred microliters of Bradford’s Reagent to each tube.”

“Okay.”

“Mix vigorously and let it sit for five minutes,” Minghao continued, skimming his lab manual.

“Got it.”

Fortunately, Jeonghan let them use their lab manual for the first lab. No more manual after this, though. They were gonna have to re-write the protocol into their lab notebooks for every lab from here on out. Something about “truly understanding the protocol” or whatever.

“Whoa, it’s turning blue!”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Minghao snarked back, glancing over at his lab partner. “Even I paid enough attention in pre-lab to know that the tube’s gonna turn blue.”

Mingyu was currently staring in awe at the tube he just mixed, pipette in one gloved hand and small snap-cap tube in the other. They had to dig out the extra-large gloves from the supply closet for Mingyu -- you know, so he could gawk at their fluorescent blue tube like an idiot and be “safe.” He finally put the tube down in its place in the tube rack, picking up the next one and repeating the whole process. Biochemistry was awfully laborious. _Boring_ , as Gyu would eloquently say.

“So,” Mingyu started, still pipetting but clearly with something else on his mind.

“What.” Minghao tried to make it perfectly clear with his monotone, unimpressed voice that if Gyu went there, so help him God, he wou--

“Any boys catch your eye?”

He went there.

Minghao sighed. “No, I’ve been too busy focusing on how much I hate you for the past hour.”

“Aw, are you going through your” -- Mingyu paused to hold up one of the cyan tubes -- “Blue Period?”

“Yeah, and pretty soon you’re gonna be dead,” Minghao warned. Not that there was any actual threat behind it, considering Mingyu was about a full head taller than him and could probably bench Minghao a few times before getting bored like the excitable puppy that he was. Mingyu just laughed; honestly, Minghao could be deathly serious and Mingyu would just brush it off like a joke.

Maybe because Hao’s whole life was a joke.

Oh god, not this thought again.

“Okay, well luckily _I’ve_ been looking for you.”

“Wonwoo’s not good enough, eh?”

“ _For you_ ,” Mingyu repeated.

“Uh huh,” he replied. He was pretending to skim the protocol while Mingyu kept pipetting, but, in reality, his brain was entirely focused on who Mingyu could have possibly noticed. It really was true that he wasn’t paying much attention; during their first pre-lab, he had at least _tried_ to pay attention to Jeonghan. And, since then, he had been focusing on making sure they don’t eff up their first lab. Mingyu apparently was wholly focused on finding Hao a boyfriend, as usual.

“So, two rows back, there’s a boy with light brown hair, a little shorter than you, round-ish face, cute eyes, though.”

Minghao decided to humor his friend. Looking back, he tried to focus through the dearth of students frantically moving everywhere, trying to figure out what the hell they were doing in this lab. He finally spotted the boy Gyu was talking about.

“Seungkwan? Boo Seungkwan? He’s dating Hansol, Gyu.”

“Okay then,” Mingyu relented. “What about the boy one row back, two benches to the left? Brown hair, dimples, strong jawline.”

Minghao sighed. The only way out of this was to shoot down everyone his friend suggested until he finally, mercifully gave up for the rest of the semester. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted Mingyu’s newest suggestion.

“Chan? Gyu, he’s like 12.”

“Then how’s he in this class?”

“I dunno, he’s probably smarter than you.”

“I thought you liked smart boys,” Mingyu quipped back.

Minghao’s brain short-circuited for a moment. On one hand, he didn’t know Mingyu was even capable of multi-tasking like he was right now, pipetting and savagely destroying him. On the other hand, he definitely was not gonna admit anything about his type because that only would motivate Mingyu to find every living and breathing boy within a 50-kilometer radius who fulfilled his so-called “type.” And there was no way in hell he was ever going to let that happen; he’d rather just die, to be honest.

“I’m gonna go figure out the spec,” Minghao eventually responded, slipping away from Mingyu who was -- you guessed it -- still pipetting. Mingyu tried calling after him, but he just ignored him, making his way to the spectrophotometers that were lined up along the edge of the lab. Each group was assigned a different spec to use, and he had to start warming their spec up ASAP. Apparently the laser takes time to power up or whatever, according to Jeonghan.

Minghao searched the back of the machine for a power switch, finally finding it near the power cord. He switched the spec on and waited for the digital display to flash on; once it did, it promptly told him that the machine was going to need a few minutes to get everything ready.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He could either stand there and wait three minutes for the machine to warm up, or he could wander back over to his bench and endure his lap partner’s unending matchmaking.

Who was he kidding, he knew exactly which one he preferred.

So Minghao awkwardly waited next to the machine, watching as other students ran around the lab like chickens with their heads cut off. It was ridiculous -- nobody seemed to know what they were doing. Minghao sighed, shook his head, and looked back down at his machine.

“Hey!”

Minghao looked to his left, finding the source of the sweet-sounding voice standing next to him. It was a boy with super-light blonde hair who couldn’t be much older than him.

“Hello?”

“Do you need any help?” the boy asked. He was clearly busy himself, hands reaching inside a nearby fume hood while he was looking over at Minghao. Honestly, he hadn’t paid attention during some of Jeonghan’s pre-lab. There was a part when he introduced the TA for their lab section, but Minghao didn’t even bother looking up. He did remember his name, though: Joshua.

“I heard you sigh and look down at the spec, so I figured you might be having some problems with it?” Joshua added. His voice was light and airy, an ever-so-slight (and quite adorable) lisp giving it a soothing tone. It was mesmerizing; he could listen to Joshua talk all day.

“Oh, um, no, I’m just waiting for the spec to turn on,” he answered this time.

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything.” Joshua just smiled at him before returning to whatever he was doing.

_Just smiled_ was a bit of an understatement. Minghao had never, ever felt like that before from someone smiling at him like that. No, Minghao felt his heart skip a beat or seven when Joshua’s thin lips curled upward, somewhat like a cheshire grin. Yet there was absolutely nothing malevolent about Joshua -- his smile emanated warmth, kindness, earnestness. Not to mention that Joshua’s dimples also fleetingly appeared when he smiled, and, if there was one thing Mingyu was right about, it was that Hao had a super weak spot for dimples.

Just then, his spec beeped at him, bringing his attention back down from fawning over how angelic Joshua looked to earthly problems like biochemistry. And having to deal with Mingyu.

Oh god, Mingyu could _never_ know about what he thought of Joshua. It would be the end of his life as he knew it.

Back to the spec, he coached himself. Back to biochemistry.

…

Shit, he forgot which wavelength he needed to set the spec to. He mulled over going back to grab his lab notebook from his lab bench where Mingyu was. Or…

“Hey, Joshua?” he started.

The boy to his left turned to face him again. This time, his brain decided to process the fact that Joshua was very much wearing a long lab coat that very much emphasized his thin figure and very much turned him on. His eyes darted up and down Joshua’s body, and apparently Joshua figured out what he was thinking.

“Oh, I know you guys don’t have to wear the coat. I mean, I don’t either, but I really don’t want to get this dye on my sweater.”

Joshua definitely said words, but all Minghao could focus on was how his lips moved up and down and how sweet his voice sounded. It was like he was entranced, focusing on Joshua’s every movement, subliminally taking in everything about him.

“Did you have a question?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” Minghao stammered. “What wavelength do I set this to? For, um, the Bradford thingy?”

“Five ninety-five,” his TA answered, not missing a beat. Meanwhile, Minghao could barely keep up with all the Feelings he was dealing with.

“T-thanks,” he muttered. Joshua nodded in response.

Minghao had to force himself to look away, to look at his instrument and plug in 595 without thinking of what just happened. Of how, for the second time in like 10 minutes, his brain short-circuited and he couldn’t think straight. All his thoughts were gay, definitely not straight. He sauntered back to Mingyu to grab their samples for the spec. At this point, he was just hoping to survive the next 120 minutes of lab without melting because of Joshua or murdering Mingyu.

“So, since smart is definitely your type,” Mingyu reasoned, “what about Jeonghan?”

“What?”

“Jeonghan. The lab instructor.”

“No.” He squashed that idea before it could get any worse.

“Well, what about Joshua?”

It got worse.

“Joshua’s definitely not my type,” Minghao defiantly responded. “Definitely not.”

Mingyu shot him a look. Minghao couldn’t shake the feeling that Mingyu was trying to read him, trying to figure him out.

“You said that really quickly,” his lab partner commented.

“That’s because it’s true?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Gyu, do you know what a standard curve is?” Minghao quickly asked, trying to change the subject. “The lab manual says we have to calculate one but I don’t remember Jeonghan going over it.”

“A standard curve? Isn’t that, like, the curve that defines your new boyfriend’s ass?” Mingyu then pointed toward Joshua, who was back over at the hood near the edge of the classroom. Minghao responded by punching Mingyu’s arm, not that his dumb golden retriever of a lab partner felt anything from Minghao’s wiry frame trying to inflict any level of appreciable pain. Hao went back to focusing on his lab manual, trying to ignore Gyu again.

“ _Joshua!_ ” Gyu shouted in the direction of their TA.

Minghao immediately turned to face his lab partner. “Why the ever-loving fu--”

“Hey!” Joshua interrupted. “What’s up?”

“Minghao had a question about standard curves but was too scared to ask,” Mingyu quickly reported.

“Scared?” Joshua asked, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck with his ungloved hand. “Am I really all that scary?”

“Minghao’s pretty shy,” Gyu added.

“ _I am not_ ,” Minghao protested, earning an angelic-sounding giggle from Joshua.

It was gonna be a long semester.

* * *

  
**From: Mingyu | 12:44 am**

“have u started the lab report for biochem?”

**To: Mingyu | 12:47 am**

“No. You?”

**From: Mingyu | 12:48 am**

“no.”

“i was thinking we could try to hammer it out friday”

“and maybe find u an alpha helix for ur beta sheet ;)”

“get it cuz ur the beta”

**To: Mingyu | 12:48 am**

“Oh my god.”

“Instead of hammering out the lab report I’m just gonna hit you with a hammer.”

**From: Mingyu | 12:49 am**

“kinky ;)”

**To: Mingyu | 12:50 am**

“I’m screenshotting this and sending it to Wonwoo.”

**From: Mingyu | 12:50 am**

“u dont have to”

“hes right here”

“he said hed help u with the hammer thing :(“

**To: Mingyu | 12:52 am**

“HA”

**From: Mingyu | 12:53 am**

“so friday at 4 pm? i signed up 4 a study room in the science building.”

**To: Mingyu | 12:54 am**

“Sure.”

“Is Wonwoo bringing the hammer or am I?”

**To: Mingyu | 1:04 am**

“Gyu?”

**From: Mingyu | 2:01 am**

“sorry, wonwoo just used his ‘hammer’ on me”

**To: Mingyu | 2:20 am**

“You know what, I think I’ll just bring duct tape instead. To shut you up.”

**From: Mingyu | 2:31 am**

“thats a good idea because wonwoo just used the last of it on me :(“

* * *

  
Friday afternoon at 4 pm. Friday afternoon at 4 pm? Why did that sound so familiar?

Minghao shook his head and entered the study room Mingyu had mentioned in his text. It was dark and empty, as one would expect for a Friday afternoon. Now that he thought about it, he was surprised Gyu suggested a _Friday afternoon_ to work on their lab report instead of, say, _Sunday night_ , when he usually did his homework. Maybe Wonwoo’s nerdiness was rubbing off on him? First Mario Party, then Dungeons and Dragons, and now studying at a reasonable hour? It wasn’t entirely unreasonable, Minghao mused.

What was actually unreasonable, though, was how hot it was in this study room. Minghao searched the walls for some sort of thermostat to no avail. The science building was old and decrepit, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that it felt like hell and there was no escape.

Just like Mingyu trying to hook him up with every boy with a pulse at this school. It was like hell and there was no escape. Ever.

There was something odd about how Mingyu had been acting for the past few days. His penchant for matchmaking seemed to be getting less obnoxious, which meant one of two things: either he was really starting to see that Minghao was going to be Single Forever™ and there was nothing he could do about it, or he really believed that Joshua was The One™ and Mingyu had a plan for how to get him and Joshua together.

Minghao really hoped it was the first one. He don’t think his brain could handle spending more than five seconds with Joshua because his brain would automatically switch to counting Joshua’s eyelashes or thinking about how soft his hair was or imaging how soft his skin was or just about anything else that caused Minghao palpable amounts of physical, emotional, and psychological pain. At the very least, pain that was above the baseline of being a barely functional half-adult with a dumbass even-less-functional best friend.

Minghao decided he might as well _try_ to change that (and probably fail) by pulling out his laptop and staring at his lab report until words happened. Before he could get very far, he heard the door the study room open, his eyes immediately darting up to glare at Gyu for being two minutes late.

“Oh? Hi Minghao, I didn’t expect anyone to come to the first week of office hours.”

“You’re… you’re not Mingyu.”

Joshua laughed. “No, I’m definitely not.”

Minghao paused for a moment, his brain trying to process what was happening right now. Joshua, meanwhile, found a spot for his messenger bag on one of the empty chairs surrounding the conference table in the middle of the study room. It seemed like he strategically placed himself closest the whiteboard, which, in a stroke of horribly bad luck for Minghao, was directly across from him.

“This… this is your office hour?”

“Yeah, of course! That’s what it says in the syllabus, right?”

He knew it. He knew that Friday at 4 pm sounded familiar. He knew Joshua mentioned Friday at 4 pm during their Tuesday pre-lab. He knew he was going to _kill_ Mingyu, who was taking his sweet time to get here.

Oh god.

Gyu wasn’t here yet on purpose.

“So did you have any questions about the lab? Or the lab report? Or anything, really?”

Joshua’s cute little smile told him he _probably_ shouldn’t ask if they had any chloroform in lab that he could use on Mingyu. Yeah, those probably weren’t the kind of sciencey questions Joshua was hoping for during his office hour.

“Minghao?”

“Oh, um, actually,” he started, trying to think on his feet, “I think I was just having trouble getting started, so I wanted to have someone around while I tried to flesh out what I was going to write about? Yeah, that.”

“Was Jeonghan’s pre-lab lecture about expectations for the lab and lab reports not clear?”

Joshua had a way for asking precise questions without making Minghao feel like a total idiot. It was something about his voice and how soothing it was? Not to mention the lavender hoodie that Joshua was wearing made him look extra cute today.

“It was…” Minghao muttered, searching for words that might make him seem even a fraction as eloquent as Joshua was. “It was clear, it’s just different hearing about what the expectations are and then actually executing that in a lab report. You know?”

“Of course,” Joshua replied. “I totally get that.”

Whew, crisis averted. Fuck you, Mingyu.

“How about this?” his TA added. “I’ll move over next to you and we can walk through the questions for this lab report and you can ask me any questions you have as they come up?”

CRISIS NOT AVERTED.

“And then after that you can get started on the lab report while I’m here and ask questions as you start writing. Sound like a plan?”

Minghao felt his soul leave his body as Joshua got up to switch to the other side of the conference table. He was barely coherent with Joshua sitting across the table from him. But with Joshua sitting next to him? Living? Breathing? Existing? Mere inches away from him? His poor soul was leaving his body even as Joshua started to sit down.

“Is it hot in here or is it just me?”

Yes. Both. Both of those statements are true.

“Maybe there’s a thermostat…” Joshua added, thinking out loud.

“I -- I already looked. Nothing.”

Joshua frowned. “They really need to lower the heat then. Guess I’ll just take off my hoodie.”

Without any further warning for Minghao’s poor embattled heart, Joshua lifted his zipperless lavender hoodie over his head, exposing a slim strip of bare skin as his white undershirt rode up. Minghao’s eyes betrayed him, soaking up every millisecond of Joshua’s toned abs because -- just to add to Minghao’s horribly bad luck today -- Joshua struggled to loop his hoodie off his head.

“Oh my god,” he muttered under his breath.

 

“Hmm?” Joshua quizzed, rolling up his hoodie and tossing it on top of his messenger bag.

“Oh, nothing. I just was thinking about how it’s so hot in here that the proteins in my head are denaturing,” he nervously ambled out, following with an equally-awkward laugh.

Joshua chuckled. Minghao had _no_ idea where that joke came from. Goddamn Mingyu rubbing off on him. Goddamn Mingyu making his life ridiculously difficult. Goddamn Mingyu, why isn’t he here yet?

His TA finally sat down next to him, the pressure of just how far Minghao had fallen for him fully setting in. Not to mention that Joshua’s stupidly fluffy blonde hair, his stupid dimples, the stupid sparkles in his eyes -- all of that was within inches of him now. Minghao was basically inches away from the sweet embrace of death.

“Okay~” Joshua hummed, opening Minghao’s lab manual to the pages detailing what they wanted for the lab report. “So the first question is about the difference between the data you get from a Bradford Assay versus the data you get from a denaturing polyacrylamide gel. It also asks for you to summarize your data. First off, do you know what the difference is between them?”

“Well, um,” Minghao stuttered. He had a good idea of what the difference was, but his mouth felt dry from how hot the room was and how hot his TA looked in his low v-neck T-shirt. “A Bradford tells us how much protein we have. A polyacrylamide gel tells us how big that protein is?”

“Yes, exactly! That’s a very good way to describe it, Minghao.”

“Thanks?”

“Accept the compliment,” Joshua added with a giggle. “You should also talk about how a denaturing gel only gives us the size of the protein monomer, not the protein’s quaternary structure, right?”

“Right.”

Minghao honestly didn’t mind this right now. As ridiculous as his stupid crush was, Joshua made him feel… comfortable? Comfortable enough to at least learn a little bit here.

“So I was wondering about how we calculate protein size.”

“Mmhmm.”

Minghao continued: “So like, we could just look at the ladder and guess the size of the protein, but I have a feeling that’s not what you guys want.”

Joshua smiled. “Right. We want you to plot the log of the molecular weight of the proteins on the ladder versus their migration distance, perform a linear regression on those points, and use that regression to calculate the molecular weight of your protein.”

Minghao blankly stared back at Joshua.

“Do you need me to repeat that?”

“Yeah, um, can I write it down?”

“Of course.”

Minghao reached down to find his backpack, which was unfortunately wedged between his chair and Joshua’s chair. Joshua didn’t seem to be bothered by the semi-invasion of his personal space, but Minghao still wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. His pencil pouch had to be somewhere in there… he finally decided to throw his whole head down into his backpack’s big pocket, hoping that he’d be able to find it faster.

Just then, the door to the study room clicked open.

“Oh. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” It sounded like Gyu finally decided to show up.

Minghao’s head was still buried in his bag, but he quickly imagined what it looked like to Mingyu:

Joshua looking awkward. Minghao’s head under the table near Joshua’s dick. Random noises coming from down there.

Oh god.

Minghao instantly brought his head back up -- right into the edge of the conference table, banging his head on the corner of it.

“Ow,” he muttered, carefully guiding his head back up.

“Are you okay?” Joshua asked, clearly more concerned than Mingyu, who was laughing his ass off. “That sounded pretty bad.”

“It felt pretty bad, too,” he deadpanned.

“I can go get you an ice pack?”

“That’d be great,” Minghao replied. Joshua promptly disappeared, leaving him alone with Mingyu. His friend was wiping tears from eyes -- probably from laughing too hard, what an asshole. Gyu started pulling his laptop and lab manual out of his bag on the opposite side of where Joshua had been sitting.

“Man, I knew biochemistry was hard, but I didn’t know it was that kind of hard, Hao.”

“I think I might actually bludgeon you with that ice pack when Joshua gets back.”

“And then what? Get back to sucking him off?”

* * *

  
“So? Any new boys?”

Minghao groaned.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t mind Junhui asking about his love life. Junhui was, like, his mentor in school and life and everything else -- the type of friend who he could confide in, who he could trust with everything. An A+ bona fide friend, if not with a flair for the dramatic sometimes.

Mingyu, who was seated on the other side of their table, was 100% not the person he wanted to have such a deep conversation with. He knew exactly how Mingyu would use this topic to torture him for the next ten minutes. Gyu, on the other hand, practically jumped at the opportunity to steer their lunchtime gossiping to Minghao’s love-life, dropping his current attack on the ginormous helping of Pad Thai that he had in front of him.

“W-well, not really…” Minghao stuttered.

“He’s in love with his TA,” Mingyu gleefully corrected. Wonwoo, who was deliberately pecking away at his sushi, rolled his eyes. Junhui swallowed one of his apple slices hard and looked incredulously at Mingyu. Minghao wanted to melt into a puddle, pushing his salad forward and collapsing his head into his arms. He didn’t even bother looking up, the darkness of his arms suiting his joke of a life better anyways. Besides, he could visualize this soon-to-be trainwreck happening in slow motion: Mingyu was going to tell Junhui that Joshua and him were basically dating (totally untrue) and about how thirsty he was for his TA (not entirely untrue); Junhui, who was extremely gullible, was going to believe every word of it and ask everything ever about Joshua: _Who could possibly be dating my little Hao-hao? And why haven’t I met him yet?_ You get the idea.

“His TA? Which class?” Junhui promptly quizzed. Minghao was still hiding his face in his arms; it was better if he couldn’t see the others.

“Biochemistry lab. Though Minghao really wants Joshua Hong to do some anatomy experiments on him.”

“Oh, naughty boy, Hao~” Junhui piped up.

Minghao couldn’t let Gyu attack whatever miniscule shred of dignity he had left. He lifted his head from his arms and glared directly at Mingyu.

“I didn’t say that!”

“Oh, you didn’t have to,” Mingyu casually dismissed. “Your heart eyes at office hours were more than enough to tell me exactly how you felt about Joshua Xu, I mean Hong.”

“You went to his office hours?” Junhui asked, shifting his attention to Minghao. “Already? It’s the first week!”

“I went to office hours because my asshole lab partner told me we should work on our lab reports. He neglected to tell me that he actually invited me to Joshua’s office hour. And then he proceeded to show up fifteen minutes late, leaving me alone with him.”

“Oh, did you get to talk to him?”

“-- Yeah, about biochemistry --”

“What’s his favorite color?” Junhui asked, paying no heed to Minghao’s accurate recollection of biochemistry office hours with Joshua Hong. To Junhui, it was a fifteen minute date; to Mingyu, it was fifteen minutes of sexual tension culminating in a lewd act that definitely 100% did not happen. To Minghao, it was the most euphoric fifte -- it was fifteen minutes of biochemistry.

“Um.”

Junhui didn’t stop there.

“His favorite food? Does he like cats? How old is he? What does he do on the weekends? What’s his favorite position in bed?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Minghao muttered while Wonwoo snickered and Mingyu giggled.

“Okay okay, to be fair, I don’t even know if I could answer all those questions about Wonwoo,” Gyu added once he finally stopped giggling. For once, Mingyu openly took Minghao’s side -- he was shocked.

Wonwoo sighed. “Your favorite color is blue, your favorite food is tteokbokki, you only like kittens but not cats, you turn 21 in a few months, you basically just sleep all weekend, and your favorite position is being bound to the bed frame.”

Minghao sputtered with laughter while Junhui smirked at the Mingyu. Gyu seemed a bit taken aback:

“Not here, babe…”

Wonwoo just shrugged.

“Besides we were talking about Minghao’s crush, not yours.”

“Yeah, I have to make sure that this Joshua boy is right for you, Hao-hao. At the very least, is he cute?”

“I, uh,” Minghao stammered.

“-- He’s definitely Hao’s type,” Mingyu butted in. “Soft. Preppy. Dimples. The whole package.”

“Oh, he does sound like your type~” Junhui sing-songed.

“Guys, I don’t have a type.”

“You definitely do,” Gyu replied.

“Everybody does, babe,” Junhui added.

“Well, I don’t,” Minghao lied. He certainly didn’t have a type, and, even if did, Joshua definitely didn’t check off any of the boxes. Or all of the boxes. Or add boxes he didn’t even know about and check those off too. Nope, no way. Minghao had no boxes. Just the box he put around his heart because there’s no way any boy would be interested in him, much less a boy like Joshua.

“Well, if not-your-type so much as breaks your heart, I’ll --”

“-- _Junhui_ , I don’t even know if he’s gay.” This wasn’t the argument he wanted to be making, but he figured it was the best way to stop this Get-Hao-A-Boyfriend train from rolling off the tracks.

“He’s gay,” Mingyu asserted, mouth full of Pad Thai to the point where he was barely comprehensible.

“And how could you possibly know that?” Minghao challenged, taking an aggressive stab at this salad. He was so-so-so ready to call Mingyu on his faulty _Gaydar_ bullshit. He had already been wrong once, that little shit.

Sorry, big shit.

“I asked Jeonghan.”

“You WHAT!?” Minghao shouted.

“Oh, Jeonghan’s gay too,” Junhui interjected, ignoring Minghao’s outburst. “Personal experience,” he added.

“Jeonghan said Joshua’s gayer than, and I quote, ‘a rainbow-colored unicorn with a lisped neigh watching Project Runway’, Hao.”

“ _And when could you possibly have asked Jeonghan this?_ ” Minghao accused, still incredulous that Mingyu could have this information. And that Joshua could be gay. It had to be bullshit.

“I saw him while I was getting coffee yesterday.” At least, that’s what Hao thought he heard -- Mingyu was still demolishing his Pad Thai.

“There’s no way--”

“-- I was waiting for my order,” Mingyu interrupted after swallowing his Pad Thai, “and then I saw him at one of the tables and then I said ‘how’s it going, head biochem subunit’, you know, as in protein subunit, and then he said ‘I’m definitely not a sub but it _was_ going well’ with emphasis on the was and then we talked for a bit and then I asked him about Joshua and he said that.”

“Did you ask if Joshua liked Hao-hao?”

“Nah, because then I got my order and had to go run back to Wonwoo’s dorm to drop off his coffee before he started thinking that I forgot about him and his love for black coffee.”

“You never forget,” Wonwoo quietly added, contributing what was quite possibly the most PG moment of this entire conversation.

“I’d really like to forget about all of this,” Minghao complained, collapsing back into his splayed-out arms and hiding from the rest of them.

“C’mon Hao, the only thing you’ll forget about is how to talk when boy-crush numero uno is within five meters of you,” Gyu replied, earning laughter around the table.

The conversation finally turned elsewhere, so Minghao went back to eating his salad in peace.

* * *

  
**To: Mingyu | 3:04 pm**

“We should start the pre-lab for Tuesday’s lab soon.”

**From: Mingyu | 3:12 pm**

“hao its wednesday”

“we just had lab yesterday”

**To: Mingyu | 3:14 pm**

“Junhui told me this one is difficult. Something about purifying proteins.”

**From: Mingyu | 3:15 pm**

“well that shouldnt be too bad”

“u could just purify some of joshuas protein”

“with your mouth ;)”

**To: Mingyu | 3:16 pm**

“WILL YOU EVER LET THAT GO”

**From: Mingyu | 3:16 pm**

“no”

“hao”

“buddy”

“im here to be the catalyst for your induced fit with joshua :)”

**To: Mingyu | 3:18 pm**

“That would almost be sweet and heartwarming if it weren’t coming from you.”

“Where are you even getting all of these from?”

“I swear to god you’re studying just to make these stupid puns.”

**From: Mingyu | 3:20 pm**

“what can i say, you make me my best self :)”

**To: Mingyu | 3:33 pm**

“I’m definitely screenshotting that one and sending it to Wonwoo.”

**From: Mingyu | 3:34 pm**

“i dont think hed care much. hes the one who made me study in the first place. said if i fail the first biochem exam that im in time out for a week.”

**To: Mingyu | 3:35 pm**

“Oh god he is making you nerdier.”

“Time-out from what?”

**From: Mingyu | 3:36 pm**

“what you were doing to joshua in the conference room last week”

**To: Mingyu | 3:37 pm**

“sTOP IT”

“>:(“

* * *

  
Mingyu was sick. Violently ill, really. Throwing up. Something about food poisoning? Wonwoo was freaking out, unsure of what to do. Minghao told him to focus on making Gyu comfortable, getting him plenty of fluids, telling Wonwoo to stock up on Gatorade for electrolytes.

Minghao was also freaking out because today was Tuesday. Aka Lab Day. And he was down his lab partner. Even though his lab partner had issues, Mingyu was an extra set of eyes, an extra pair of hands, an extra mostly-functional science-minded brain. And today’s lab was supposed to be difficult -- they were purifying a protein in three hours. Minghao didn’t know if he could do it alone.

Honestly, he needed Gyu here. Even if it meant three hours of endless teasing about Joshua, he needed the help.

As soon as he walked into the teaching lab, Jeonghan swooped in to talk to him: “Minghao, is Mingyu doing okay? He sent me an email.”

“Yeah, um, his boyfriend said it was food poisoning? Something about bad cheese? I don’t know the details.”

“Oh, so he won’t be coming in at all today.”

“Yeah. Jeonghan, I don’t know if I can do this lab by myself.”

“We would _never_ expect you to do one of these labs by yourself, Minghao. They’re designed for two people!”

Minghao felt a little relieved hearing that. “So which group am I joining?”

“Oh, we’re not having you join another group. Again, they’re designed for two people.”

“So someone’s joining me? There aren’t any groups of three, though.”

“Yeah. Joshua will be helping you out.”

“Joshua?” Minghao asked, starting to feel a light-headed.

“Is that a problem?”

He wanted to say yes. To scream yes at the top of his lungs. To scream into a pillow, to be honest. Working with Joshua? For three hours? Minghao could barely talk to Joshua for three minutes, let alone three hours. Not to mention that he was going to feel like a complete and total idiot.

“Minghao?”

“Oh, um, yeah, it’ll… it’s fine.”

It was definitely not going to be fine.

“Great,” Jeonghan answered with a smile. “So I wanted everybody to get started right away, I think Joshua’s already waiting for you at your bench. I’ll give the pre-lab lecture about 30 minutes into the lab period.”

It was definitely not going to be great.

Minghao looked over at his lab bench, which Joshua was spraying down with a 70% ethanol solution. Part of him almost wished he was working alone. Another part of him, _definitely not his heart_ , swooned at the sight of Joshua at _his_ lab bench. An even bigger part of him was worried about looking like an idiot in front of Joshua, of not knowing this protocol inside and out, of Joshua being completely disappointed by Minghao. Most people were disappointed by Minghao; he didn’t want Joshua to be one of them.

“You should probably get started,” Jeonghan suggested. Apparently Minghao was still standing there watching Joshua. Like a lovesick puppy.

“Right,” Minghao blurted out. He walked to his bench. _Keep it cool, Hao._

It took the entire fifteen seconds meandering to his bench to figure out whether to say “hey,” “hi,” or “what’s up” to Joshua, debating which one would be the coolest. Because, y’know, cool people think about how to greet other people, right?

Minghao wouldn’t know -- he wasn’t cool.

“H-hey.”

He was so focused on the word that he botched the delivery. Joshua didn’t seem to notice, waving at him and smiling instead of saying anything back.

“I -- I’m sorry you have to help me,” Minghao muttered, earning a concerned frown from Joshua. He couldn’t help it -- he felt sorry that Joshua had to help him like this.

“It’s not your fault, Minghao. I do this for anybody who’s down a lab partner.”

“Right.” Joshua’s words hurt in a different way -- he wanted to think he was special, but he wasn’t.

“So the way this usually works is that you take the lead. You can delegate what you want me to do, and I’ll take care of it for you.”

Minghao nodded.

“Just don’t make me do everything,” Joshua said with a laugh.

Minghao smiled, unable to form any words in response. It was stupid -- he couldn’t find any words to say around Joshua.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Oh, um,” Minghao started. He hadn’t really been paying attention, focusing on how pretty Joshua’s lips were when they moved instead of thinking about proteins and biochemistry.

“Is -- is it okay if I look at my lab notebook? I, uh, have the protocol written down, but I don’t have it memorized.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry!” Joshua replied, freaking out a little. “I forgot to mention, please don’t worry about being perfect? Just because I know the protocol and the lab inside-out doesn’t mean you have to. If you need to look at your lab manual or ask questions or really anything else please don’t hesitate because I’m your lab partner today. I know this is hard, and I want you to learn. Besides, if you already knew how to do everything, why would you even need me?”

_Because of your calm and soothing voice? Because your smile makes me want to try like fifteen times harder in life? Because the sparkles in your eyes make me want to scream and purify all the protein in the world for you? Because the way you know how to say just the right to make me feel better is amazing and wonderful, just like you? Because imagining you in a big fluffy sweater with a cup of coffee is quite possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever imagined in the history of ever?_

“Right,” Minghao blurted out.

Smooth, Minghao.

“Let me know when you know what you want me to do, Captain Hao.”

And now Minghao couldn’t shake the image of Joshua in a sailor uniform.

No, no, _no_ get that image out of your head, Hao. Focus on biochemistry. He pulled out his lab notebook, flipping to today’s lab. Purifying protein. That’s right, he had separated today’s lab into two different things that needed to happen in parallel: first, pushing through the initial parts of the purification, to be headed by one person; second, prepping the “column” or these fancy beads for the last steps of the protein purification, to be coordinated by the other.

“Okay, so, um, Joshua?” he piped up, motioning toward his notebook.

“Yeah!” his TA replied, moving right up next to him to read his notebook. It took all of Minghao’s power _not_ to focus on how Joshua smelled like strawberries and how his shoulder was pressing up against Minghao’s because they were basically the same height.

“So, um,” he started, “I was reading through the protocol and realized it would be best to have us split it up? Like, it makes more sense for one of us to focus on starting to get the protein out of the cells and the other person to get the column for actually purifying the protein ready. Could -- would you be willing to start equilibrating the column?”

Joshua placed a hand on Minghao’s shoulder, locking his crescent-shaped eyes with Minghao’s and knowingly smiling directly at him.

“You’re really smart, you know that, Minghao?”

“Um, what?”

“I’m just so proud of you really figuring out what to do for this lab!” he exclaimed. “Good job, bro.”

“T-thanks?”

“Take the compliment -- you earned it!”

Minghao sheepishly smiled, looking away in embarrassment. “Thanks,” he repeated slightly more definitively this time.

Joshua now focused on putting on gloves, and Minghao did the same. _Don’t focus on his hands, Hao._ Focus on biochemistry.

“So, um, I’ll go get a bucket of ice? And grab the reagents for lysing our cells. You know where the column stuff is, right?”

His TA gave him a look.

“R-right, you know where everything is.”

“I would hope so~” Joshua sing-songed. Fuck, his voice was so pretty.

“Sorry, I’m so used to Gyu kinda not knowing where stuff is.”

“It’s okay! I’ll be right back.”

Joshua disappeared to go be an extremely competent lab partner elsewhere, leaving Minghao alone with his barely-functional self and a whole lot of worrying, hyperventilation-inducing thoughts.

For instance, oh-god-why-is-he-starting-to-really-like-Joshua-a-whole-lot-more-than-he-used-to-this-is-not-supposed-to-happen-he-didn’t-even-think-his-crush-could-get-even-worse-oh-god. Or, why-does-he-smell-like-strawberries-because-strawberries-are-his-favorite-fruit. Or, can-Mingyu-be-sick-every-week?

Minghao tried to bring himself back to Earth, grabbing an ice bucket and heading over to the ice machine. He needed ice, lysis buffer, and protease inhibitors. Oh, and a whole lot of self-control.

And the lab period was just getting started.

* * *

  
Minghao didn’t want to get out of bed.

Lab was okay.

Actually, it was great.

Yesterday was great.

Joshua was a dream. Both as a lab partner and as a friend.

Could he call him a friend now? He felt like he could.

He learned that Joshua loved to touch other people. He was a very tactile person. It was little things. A fist-bump here, a high-five there, steadying Hao’s hands while he was pouring something important. Little things like that -- things that Joshua probably didn’t even notice. Like when he felt Joshua start rubbing little circles into his back until dumbass Minghao pointed it out and Joshua got all nervous and stopped.

He learned that Joshua was a Ph.D student. That he used to sing. That he was wickedly smart, and that he loved High School Musical. Joshua had little ticks, like how he affectionately called Minghao “bro” or how he sometimes liked to respond with a smile instead of words. When he got nervous, he apologized profusely and talked really fast, like he was running out of time to make things better.

Honestly? Joshua was great. Perfect, really.

That was the problem, though.

Joshua was perfect, and, well, Hao was the opposite of that.

Minghao was shy all the time. He barely knew how to express himself with words. He was dorky, nerdy, reserved, flopping from one disaster to the next. A perpetual shitstorm.

Joshua was funny, outgoing, and always knew what to say. He was a little nerdy, sure, but Minghao loved that.

He hated his own version of nerdiness, though. It made him cringe, it made him want to roll his head into his pillow and go back to bed. To forget that Joshua even existed -- no, to forget that _he_ even existed because he couldn’t hold a candle to how perfect Joshua was. He felt like trash by comparison.

Minghao had been thinking about this for the past two hours since getting up. Well, getting up was a bit of a lie. He was still in bed, thinking about so many things but always coming back to one thing:

He had a big fat crush on Joshua Hong.

Immediately followed by another thought:

He was definitely not good enough for Joshua Hong.

* * *

  
**To: Wonwoo | 10:47 pm**

“Hey can we talk?”

**From: Wonwoo | 10:48 pm**

“Shit.”

“Did gyu steal your lab manual again.”

“Dw, i’ll talk to him about ‘borrowing’ versus ‘stealing’”

“Again”

**To: Wonwoo | 10:48 pm**

“No no it’s not that.”

“It’s about something else.”

**From: Wonwoo | 10:49 pm**

“Oh, what’s up?”

**To: Wonwoo | 10:50 pm**

“I was kinda hoping to talk in person?”

**From: Wonwoo | 10:51 pm**

“Sure”

**To: Wonwoo | 10:52 pm**

“Coffee tomorrow at 9? At the cafe near my dorm?”

**From: Wonwoo | 10:53 pm**

“9 am? You’re killing me hao”

“See you then”

* * *

  
“Is there any particular reason you didn’t want to talk to Mingyu about…” Wonwoo started. Whatever this is?”

He put down their coffees -- black for him and a super frilly latte for Minghao -- and quietly sat down on the other side of the booth. Minghao immediately grabbed his coffee and took a sip. It was deliciously sugar-filled, as usual, but it also gave him something to latch onto, something to play with. He could spin the cup around in his fingers, the restlessness from the last few days eating away at him. The start of his third day agonizing about Joshua.

“You… you know how Gyu is. He’s basically a big dumb puppy -- and you know that I love him because he’s a big dumb puppy -- but sometimes… well, sometimes I don’t feel like I can talk to him about some things? Not that he wouldn’t try his best if I told him it was serious, but this is something that I think you can speak to better.”

“That was oddly eloquent for calling my boyfriend a ‘big dumb puppy’ twice,” Wonwoo deadpanned.

Minghao chuckled. “A few weeks ago he called me his ‘fashionable emo best friend’ and you his ‘nerdy emo boyfriend,’ so I don’t know if he’s any better.”

Wonwoo smiled before taking another sip from his coffee. The aroma wafted in Minghao’s direction, mixing with all the other strongly-caffeinated scents sauntering through the coffeehouse. It was definitely the most awake Minghao had felt in a few days.

“For someone who has something serious to talk about, you seem awfully at ease.”

“That’s probably because I’m too tired to be on edge anymore,” Minghao replied with a round of nervous laughter attached at the end. “I’ve been freaking out about this for three days, so I don’t think I have the energy to outwardly show it anymore, y’know?”

Wonwoo nodded in understanding, taking another sip.

“It helps that I haven’t seen… him,” Minghao added.

“Oh, so this is about Joshua.”

“Yeah.”

Wonwoo let a silence settle between the two of them, as if he were trying to figure out where this conversation was going to go. Perhaps Minghao was so at ease because he had planned out every possible direction that it could meander. Wonwoo, meanwhile, took the reprieve to look around the cafe, which was bustling with people coming in and out, orders getting shouted out, and students pecking away at laptops everywhere.

“I think this is part of the reason why I don’t like getting up early,” Wonwoo finally said. “Too many people around. Too much noise, it’s hard to concentrate.”

“We can go somewhere else if you want?”

Wonwoo smiled. It was soft and reserved, kinda like him. “No, it’s okay. I thought it might be about him. I was just making sure he wasn’t here.”

“I don’t think he’d come to an undergrad-heavy cafe.”

“He would if he knew you came here regularly.”

“Hey now, I didn’t know I invited Mingyu.”

“Ouch.”

Minghao laughed and took a sip of his latte. He then dabbed his mouth with a napkin, focusing on Wonwoo again.

“So I wanted to talk because, like, things happened.”

“Sexy things?”

“Only in my dreams,” Minghao quipped. “No, on Tuesday -- and you can’t tell Gyu this, but Joshua was basically my lab partner while Mingyu was busy puking his guts out.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so it was basically three hours of me realizing -- and you _definitely_ can’t tell Gyu this -- but it was basically three hours of me realizing that I have a giant fucking crush on him.”

“I see.”

“And I’ve spent the past two or three days obsessing over every little thing I know about Joshua and thinking how great it would be if we were dating and how much I --”

“-- I get the point.”

“Sorry,” Minghao murmured, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “Sometimes I get carried away.”

“Noted.”

“But,” Minghao continued, his heart starting to get heavy thinking about what he was going to talk about, “But, when… when I think about how perfect Joshua is, how outgoing and confident he is, about all the ways that he’s amazing and cute and pretty, I -- I can’t help but compare myself to him and think about how I’m none of those things and I think about how I would never be good enough for him because I’m just… boring.”

He kept talking, vocalizing the thought process he had been reliving over and over again for the past several days.

“And -- and, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought about you and Gyu? Because I remember Mingyu talking all the time about how you didn’t reciprocate his flirting, and I told him that it was probably because, well, introverts don’t work like him? It takes us a long time to get out of our shells, to feel comfortable with other people. And he mentioned after you guys started dating that you didn’t think you were good enough for him either and I wanted to talk because clearly you got past that somehow but I don’t know how to because I’ve never done this before. I hate hating myself, but I feel like it’s the only thing I can do right now.”

Minghao took a deep breath and looked up at Wonwoo, who was staring back at him, his expression unchanged from before Minghao went on his soliloquy. Wonwoo calmly took another sip from his coffee.

“First,” Wonwoo replied, Minghao hanging onto every word. “You’re a catch, Minghao. I’m not great at the whole compliment thing, Hao, but everybody’s different. Just because Joshua is confident and charming doesn’t mean that you’re not endearing and warm. Like, you’re a whole different type of catch. You’re a red snapper and Joshua’s a salmon. Different, but still good catches and delicious sushi rolls.”

“Second -- and I swear to god if you tell Mingyu this I will kill you, but I still don’t think I’m good enough for him. Every day I look at my, quote, ‘big dumb puppy’ and wonder why he chose me. I don’t think it’s a feeling that ever goes away, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But don’t let it eat at you. Let it keep you humble. Let it remind you that you have to work at your relationships if you want them to get better. Let it motivate you. I won’t go into specifics, but you’d be surprised at the stupid shit I will only do for Mingyu. And, based on what Mingyu says you’re like for Biochemistry lab, I’d be willing to guess that you only work that hard because of Joshua.”

“Third.” Wonwoo took another sip of coffee. “Stop thinking so damn far ahead, Minghao. You took Mingyu’s ‘Joshua Xu’ joke too seriously. You’re not getting married tomorrow. I would just like to give you a friendly reminder that it may work out or it may not work out. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get up on Tuesday, put on your best outfit, and go impress the shit out of him. Because, if it doesn’t work out, you know that me, Mingyu, and Junhui will all be here for you.”

“M-Mingyu would probably kick his ass,” Minghao choked out.

“Right,” Wonwoo said with a smile.

“I --” Minghao tried to add before the words stopped altogether. Instead, he felt his eyes start to water; Wonwoo noticed and promptly handed him an extra napkin to dab his eyes with. He needed a moment to process all of those words, to let them truly sink in and to feel them.

“T-thank you,” he finally said, pulling himself together. “I really needed that.”

Wonwoo smiled and nodded.

“And, uh, please don’t tell Gyu that we talked or anything.”

“Of course. Mario Party tonight?”

Minghao smiled. “Of course.”

* * *

  
“So how was Tuesday’s lab? Thanks for the data, by the way.”

“You’re welcome. It was fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

Mingyu was smiling now. It was pretty suspicious.

“Why?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Spill it,” Minghao demanded.

“A little birdie told me you spent three hours with tall, dark, and handsome as your lab partner.”

“Someone clearly told you a lie.” Fucking Wonwoo.

“I don’t think Junhui would lie about Jeonghan saying that, though.”

Oh. Sorry Wonwoo.

“Look, it was strictly biochemistry lab.”

“So you’re gonna have me believe that you spent three hours _not_ ogling Joshua’s perky little ass?”

“Yes, that’s precisely what you should believe,” he insisted.

Great, now he was gonna be thinking about that for at least the next fifteen minutes. Just how perky was Joshua’s ass? He’d have to do some experiments later.

“Or that you didn’t make heart eyes at Joshua every time he looked in your general direction?”

“Gyu, I’m too depressed to make heart eyes. Undergrad’s made me sullen and dead.”

“Or that we’re not walking toward the science building at this very moment so you can go to his office hour?”

Okay, perhaps walking with Mingyu to the science building wasn’t the best idea in retrospect. First, there were the intense and highly personal attacks on Minghao’s character (he was a man of _science_ , not just ass-ogling). Second, there was the slanderous insinuation that Minghao was going to the science building on Friday at 4 pm _just_ to talk to Joshua (c’mon, the science building was far away, he wouldn’t go unless there was a good reason). Third, there was the sinking realization that, yes, Gyu was going to find out that he was in fact going to the science building to go talk to Joshua.

He might as well come clean now.

“Okay, so Joshua emailed me.”

“So he sexted you.”

“He _emailed_ me.”

“‘Are you made of cupric tellerium? Because you’re CuTe,’” Mingyu parroted, throwing his voice higher to mimic Joshua’s.

“More like ‘Can you come to office hours tomorrow’, but go off I guess.”

“Followed by seventeen hearts and signed ‘xoxo biochem babe Shua’, right.”

“He’s not a hoe, Gyu.” _Shua does have a certain ring to it, though?_

“But you are.”

“Yeah, it’s me, Xu Minghao, a hoe for Joshua’s starry eyes and for _Mingyu shutting up_.”

Mingyu laughed at that one. An improvement over the snark, for sure, but he knew Gyu’s assault on his dignity wasn’t over. It’d never be over. Not that Minghao had any dignity left.

“I bet he likes your sassiness.”

“But I don’t sass him.”

“He sees you sassing me in lab and wants some of that for himself.”

“Oh my god,” Minghao whined, finally rendered speechless by Mingyu’s ridiculousness. It was only a matter of time, to be fair.

“Though Jeonghan said that Joshua really just wanted to feel you up.”

Minghao paused for a moment. Jeonghan was more astute and observant than he let on, and Joshua was more obvious about his propensity for being touchy-feely than Hao thought.

“I’m sure he’s just a tactile person.”

“Tactile? You’re even talking like him,” Mingyu teased, holding open the door to the building for Minghao. He darted through and Mingyu followed him.

“Oh look, we’re inside now and have to go different ways, catch you later Gyu, don’t let Wonwoo leave too many obvious hickies tonight!”

Minghao escaped up the stairwell, leaving Mingyu on the first floor to go do whatever it is Mingyus do on Fridays at 4 pm in the science building.

Thankfully, Gyu didn’t try to follow him, giving him a few minutes to collect himself. He needed the reprieve between all of Mingyu’s teasing and actually talking to his TA; if he went right from one to the other, he’d probably get all flustered and say something stupid.

Except that was probably gonna happen anyways.

Minghao sighed, starting to walk toward the study room. Ever since he got Joshua’s email this morning after talking to Wonwoo, he had been obsessed with thinking about what Joshua might want. Was it something small? Did he forget something in lab? No, it couldn’t be that, he was pretty sure he didn’t forget anything that couldn’t wait until next Tuesday. Did he fail his last lab report? Oh god, maybe he did fail that lab report. Maybe Joshua wanted to talk about how he needed to shape up or he was gonna fail the class, too.

Before he knew it, Minghao was standing right in front of the door to the study room. He could tell that the light inside was on, meaning that Joshua was already there. Minghao took a deep breath, trying to still his heart (maybe enough so that it would stop and he wouldn’t have to do this). Finally, he opened the door.

…

He didn’t know why he was expecting to die as soon as he entered the study room, but he didn’t.

“Hey, how’s it going, bro?” Joshua started, getting up from his seat to give him a one-handed hug. Minghao actually felt his heart stop this time; it was such a cute, purely _Joshua_ way of greeting him. He loved it.

“Um, good? I think?”

Joshua looked confused, cocking his head slightly and frowning a bit.

“I, uh -- I’m a little worried that you’re gonna tell me I sucked on my last lab report.”

“Oh, no, you did fine,” Joshua said with a smile. “I guess I should’ve told you it wasn’t really a class thing.”

Um. Then what sort of thing was it?

“So…?”

“Okay, it’s kinda a class thing?” Joshua corrected, adding a little nervous giggle at the end. “So, uh, the staple came off your second lab report, and the papers got all out of order. I was hoping that you could just sort them out for me?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“Great!” Joshua exclaimed. “I’m really sorry, I just didn’t want to guess, and I know you’re busy but it would’ve been confusing over email.”

Minghao always forgot that Joshua was such a cute person; it was too much for his heart to handle.

“It -- It’s totally okay,” he choked out.

“I have your report over here,” Joshua replied, motioning toward his seat at the table. Minghao reluctantly followed him and sat down next to him, wondering how he ended up in this situation for the second week in a row. Minghao’s Horribly Bad Luck™ continues.

“Okay,” Minghao blurted out.

“Right, so I have all the pages here.” Joshua fanned out a stack of papers that he had already pulled out and set on the desk, the pages spreading out to take up most of the area in front of them.

Minghao looked at all the pages. It was a little triggering, remembering how he spent last weekend slaving over this lab report. He found the first page, then the second, and so on, reorganizing the report into a new stack of papers.

“I think this is it,” Minghao muttered once he finished, handing the sorted lab report back to Joshua.

“Thanks,” Joshua replied, looking directly back at him.

Fuck, they were really close to each other. Joshua’s head was only inches from his own, their chairs butted up against each other. It was oddly intimate -- but, then again, there always seemed to be something intimate about his interactions with Joshua. Like every conversation had that lingering bit of tension just waiting to pop, just waiting for that one time when it ended in something other than an awkward wave or a curt nod. Not that Minghao and his shy-ass self would ever do anything differently. He preferred to let his pain fester until it burned.

Apparently today’s awkward thing was a staring contest.

Or so he thought.

Without much warning, Joshua leaned in and fleetingly kissed Minghao on the lips.

* * *

 


	2. He Can’t Possibly Be Gay For Me

**From: Junhui | 10:05 am**

“JEONGHAN TOLD ME EVERYTHING”

“JOSHUA KISSED YOU????”

“I HAVE TO MEET HIM NOW”

“YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT HE SAID”

“EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID”

“AND WHAT HE DID”

“ALL THE DETAILS”

**From: Junhui | 10:11 am**

“MINGHAO”

**From: Junhui | 10:22 am**

“XU MINGHAO STOP LEAVING ME ON READ”

“I’M OLDER THAN YOU YOU HAVE TO RESPOND RIGHT NOW”

**From: Junhui | 10:35 am**

“MINGHAO YOU CAN’T AVOID ME FOREVER”

**From: Mingyu | 10:37 am**

“JOSHUA KISSED YOU????”

“did u actually purify his proteins this time???”

“does he want u to purify his proteins? ;)”

“or maybe check out his test tube? ;)”

“or pump his atp synthase? ;)”

“does he want to do experiments with you? ;)”

“or on top of you? ;)”

**From: Mingyu | 10:41 am**

“THIS IS SO EXCITING”

“am i invited to the wedding”

“can i be best man”

“I basically brought u 2 together”

**From: Mingyu | 10:45 am**

“MINGHAO”

**From: Wonwoo | 10:49 am**

“Hao can you please answer him”

“He won’t stop screaming”

* * *

  
Minghao looked down at his phone.

He had been studying -- well, trying to study -- in his favorite cafe, so he threw his phone in his bag and forgot about it. By the time he finished his coffee, read maybe like two pages of his textbook, given up, and pulled his phone back out, he had… 24 unread messages? One from his mom and 23 from Team Get-Minghao-A-Boyfriend. He replied to his mom (always reply to your mom), and then looked at the rest. He stood up from his table, still reading, his expression morphing to a mixture of horror, embarrassment, faux-outrage, and stupid giggling.

Oh shit.

“Nope,” he said out loud to himself, locking his phone and shoving it into his pocket. He was gonna deal with that clusterfuck later.

Oh _double shit_.

Today was Monday.

Monday was when he got lunch with Team Get-Minghao-A-Boyfriend. That lunch was supposed to happen in fifteen minutes. Fuck. Not what he needed right now. Not with his phone basically exploding like it just did.

… He could bail. Say that he got a head-cold or something. Couldn’t be around bright lights and noise. Make a quip about how Mingyu was a walking megaphone.

But then he’d have to have this conversation three times instead of once. Even if the one time sucked, he could just get it over with. Never have to talk about it ever again. Pretend that _It_ \-- the way he had been referring to the whole thing at office hours -- never happened. He wished he could just permanently block It from his mind, but instead It just turned into one of those memories that you re-lived at the most inopportune time. Like those times you remember when your waiter said “Enjoy your meal!” and you replied “You too!”

Except that It wasn’t cringey. Well, it wasn’t _just_ cringey. It was confusing, too. After Joshua pulled back, he started blushing, apologizing over and over again, and scooting his chair away from Minghao like the younger boy needed the space. Minghao, in response, acted completely traumatized, shut down completely, and completely ignored Joshua’s reaction by murmuring something completely inaudible about having to leave and scurrying out of the room -- it was a complete and utter fail on Minghao’s part, he had decided.

He could’ve, like, kissed back.

Minghao had no way to spin this to his friends. Nope, Junhui and Mingyu -- _especially Mingyu_ \-- were going to tease him forever. He sighed dramatically, trying to push these thoughts away, trying to walk to their usual spot for lunch without obsessing over his impending hazing. Instead, Minghao tried to focus on something else that was bothering him.

Just how close were Jeonghan and Junhui?

Close enough that Jeonghan had leaked not one, but _two_ pieces of information to Team Get-Minghao-A-Boyfriend via Junhui. Jeonghan was the course instructor last year too, aka when Junhui was taking the course himself. But Junhui had never mentioned Jeonghan -- at least not by name. Junhui was far more confident about boys than Minghao (to be fair, _everybody_ was more confident around boys than Minghao), so he wouldn’t be surprised if Junhui told him about his Jeonghan escapades, minus Jeonghan’s name. He also wouldn’t put it past Junhui to hook up with the course instructor. No shame, he shook his head.

 _Not that you’re doing any better, Mr. I’m-In-Love-With-My-TA_ , he chided himself.

Minghao opened the door to the dining hall and quickly found their usual table. He sat down and pulled out his phone by habit, reminding himself of the 23 messages that he hadn’t responded to yet. He sighed, scrolling through the messages again, gauging just how bad today was gonna be.

“ _Xu Minghao, how dare you not respond to me_ ,” Junhui scolded him, walking up to his table and throwing his messenger bag on an empty chair next to him. Junhui was in one of his moods -- fake upset, or whatever.

“I was studying?” he tried to explain, his reply sounding more like a question than an answer. Minghao looked up at Junhui, who had stopped in front of the table and perched his hands on his hips. Junhui was a few inches taller than him, but Junhui could never be intimidating, even if he tried.

“Oh, studying?” Junhui cajoled, his tone telling Hao that he was still totally unimpressed by his explanation. “Were you with _Joshua_? Because that’s the only acceptable reason you weren’t answering.”

“No, uh, I was by myself,” he admitted.

“Then why in the name of our lord and savior, Beyonce, did you not text me back?” Junhui chastised; Minghao forgot how much Junhui loved being dramatic. “I’m _older_ than you Hao, you _have_ to respond to me. It’s just how things work.”

“He didn’t reply to us either!” Mingyu shouted, barging into their conversation. “He ignored me _and_ Wonwoo.”

“That’s probably because you followed up your questions with fifteen dumbass biochemistry sexual innuendos,” Wonwoo muttered, looking over at Minghao sympathetically. Wonwoo and Mingyu both dropped their bags on the last two empty chairs.

“What’s more important is that he didn’t respond to me,” Junhui interjected. “Who else is gonna make sure that Baby Hao’s poor little gay heart doesn’t get broken?”

“Um,” Minghao tried to answer.

“Certainly not Mingyu,” Junhui added.

“Well, we’re all here now, so why don’t we go grab some food and Minghao can tell us all about his little date with Joshua,” Wonwoo suggested, placing a reassuring hand on Mingyu’s shoulder. Mingyu made a disappointed face, and Junhui begrudgingly agreed.

“Fine,” Mingyu acquiesced. “But when we get back, you’re telling us everything, Hao!”

Mingyu and Junhui disappeared into the dearth of humanity to go find food. Wonwoo lingered a bit when he realized Minghao hadn’t left the table, still holding onto his phone with a dumb-looking face, probably.

“Aren’t you gonna get something?” Wonwoo asked.

“Not hungry,” Minghao replied, sitting down a little dramatically. He wasn’t really upset about everybody’s interest in what happened -- he was more upset that he was going to have to answer for his idiotic self walking away from Joshua like that.

Wonwoo frowned. “There’s nothing I can do to get you out of talking about it, but I’m going to get you food.”

“I’m not hungr--”

“-- I’m getting you food, and that’s that.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he conceded.

Wonwoo then disappeared too, leaving Minghao alone at the table again. This was gonna be a mess. At least Wonwoo was kinda on his side? Not that Junhui and Mingyu weren’t on his side. Oh, that actually was kinda reassuring? Mingyu and Junhui were on his side, even if it came with a healthy dose of Junhui’s sass and a overwhelming dose of Mingyu’s overzealous matchmaking. And Wonwoo was there and ready to advocate for him, so there was that too.

Minghao stared down at the table, tracing the abstract design traced on the table itself. It was stupid and kept his mind off of other things.

A few minutes later, Junhui, Mingyu, and Wonwoo all returned at about the same time, taking their seats around him. Wonwoo passed a small container with six California rolls over to Minghao, along with a pair of chopsticks and a packet of soy sauce.

“Thanks,” Minghao murmured. At least Wonwoo chose good food, he thought while glancing over Mingyu’s heaping pile of Pad Thai.

To clarify, Pad Thai isn’t gross. Mingyu’s portion size of Pad Thai is gross. There’s such a thing as too much Pad Thai.

“So,” Junhui started.

“What happened!” Mingyu demanded, finishing Junhui’s question for him, earning a death glare from Junhui. “Did he really kiss you!”

“Jeonghan wouldn’t lie!” Junhui countered.

“No, but you might.”

“I would nev--”

“--Yes, he did kiss me,” Minghao interrupted, trying to prevent the Mingyu-Junhui feud from escalating. His voice was soft and deliberate, but everybody waited for him to spill the beans, thankfully. “It, uh, seemed like an accident? Like maybe not an accident? But spur of the moment? We were, uh, sitting really close to each other and he just kinda leaned in and um--”

“--On the lips?” Junhui asked.

“Yeah, but it only lasted like a second?” he answered. “And then he pulled away.”

“What happened next?” Mingyu blurted out, mouth full of Pad Thai. “Did you kiss him back?”

“No, I, uh,” Minghao stuttered, deciding what to say next. “He started apologizing and moving his chair away like I needed space.”

“How did you respond?” Junhui implored.

“I, um. Well, I got up, murmured ‘thanks’, and left.”

“You did _what_?” Junhui scolded, his voice getting louder.

“You walked away!?” Gyu added.

Wonwoo shook his head. “I told you not to get your hopes up.”

Mingyu ignored his boyfriend: “You could’ve, like, actually gotten some there, Hao.”

“I’m with Gyu on this one,” Junhui replied. “Wasted opportunity there.”

“I’m sorry, okay! I panicked and didn’t know what to do. I’m not good at this whole feelings thing.”

“It’s my fault, really,” Junhui admitted, shaking his head. “I should’ve taught you better. Prepared you for this moment.”

“I agree, this is definitely Junhui’s fault,” Gyu cheekily added.

Wonwoo punched Mingyu on the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“First off, you like my dick,” Mingyu challenged. “Second, I single-handedly brought the Minghao-Joshua KD value down, making this whole relationship more likely. It’s not my fault Junhui didn’t prepare Minghao to complete the reaction.”

“Oh my god,” Minghao complained, rolling his eyes.

“Since when did he get so nerdy?” Junhui cringed before taking a bite out of his sandwich.

“SINCE I STARTED TRYING TO GET TWO BIG NERDS TOGETHER.”

“Hey!” Minghao protested. “I thought I was fashionable.”

“You’re very fashionable, babe,” Junhui consoled him, caressing Minghao’s thigh under the table. “You’re just not good with words. Or actions. Or anything other than clothing, to be honest.”

Minghao started pouting. He was good with words, just not around Joshua. It wasn’t his fault that Joshua decided to go kiss him in the middle of his office hour!

“I don’t even know if it was a real kiss,” Minghao flatly said.

“What?”

“Like, what if he just lost his balance and leaned forward into my lips?”

“Yeah, just like how Wonwoo tripped last night and his mouth landed right on my di--”

“--That’s enough about us,” Wonwoo interrupted, starting to blush. “We’re talking about Minghao’s problems here.”

“Right,” Mingyu agreed. “The beta sheet to end all beta sheets.”

Junhui shot Mingyu a look.

“Get it. Cuz he’s a beta.”

“Not for long,” Junhui added.

Huh? All the heads at the table turned toward Junhui, who was smirking ever-so-slightly. That was not a good sign.

* * *

  
Junhui’s grip was surprisingly strong for someone who basically never worked out.

The older boy had a tight hold on Minghao’s arm, yanking him along the sidewalk despite his fervent protests. Junhui still hadn’t fessed up what they were doing, where they were going, or why it was necessary, simply saying that it needed to happen _right now_. Junhui was suspiciously quiet, keeping up a brisk pace that prevented Minghao from putting up much of a fight.

Not that he’d dare defy Junhui and face his never-ending wrath.

“Where are we even going?” Minghao whined. “Can’t you at least tell me that?”

They’d been walking for about five minutes now, and Junhui had ignored every other plea from Minghao thus far.

Junhui sighed. “Babe, we’re going to my apartment. Now will you stop resisting?”

“Okay, okay, fine,” he acquiesced. At least Junhui wasn’t taking him straight to Joshua or something. “But why do we have to go there right now?”

“Because I have to give you something, Hao.”

“And it can’t wait?”

“Nope!~” Junhui sing-songed, his high-pitched melodic voice reminding him of Joshua a bit.

“C’mon,” Minghao complained. This was torture. Actual torture.

Junhui ignored him: “Besides, we’re almost there.”

Minghao groaned, deciding just to suffer the rest of the way there in silence. Junhui pulled him into an older brick building that looked like it had been renovated, directed him to the elevator, and quietly waited for the lift to bring him to his floor. Minghao had never seen Junhui this quiet before. The older boy led them to his apartment, keyed into the door, and basically pushed Minghao inside. Before Minghao could even take in Junhui’s small-ish apartment, Junhui had locked the front door and slid an end table in front of the exit, effectively locking them in.

“W-what gives? I thought you were just going to hand something to me or whatever.”

“I _am_ giving you something, babe,” Junhui replied. “A lesson.”

“A lesson? In what? Biochemistry?”

“No,” Junhui replied, a devious smirk plastered on his face. “Boys.”

Minghao’s eyes widened at Junhui’s answer. “I -- I thought you were joking earlier!”

“Hmmph,” Junhui rebuked. “I’ll have you know that I’m an excellent teacher on the subject of boys, Baby Hao.”

“I am _not_ a baby,” Minghao protested. Junhui couldn’t seem to care less about Minghao’s response, though. He was too busy clearing the center of his small living room, moving the coffee table toward one of the walls.

“You _are_ a baby until you prove to me otherwise,” he insisted.

“And just how exactly am I supposed to prove it to you?” he whined in response. Junhui wasted no time grabbing onto Minghao’s hand and pulling him into the center of his living room where the coffee table was. Junhui forced him to sit down cross-legged with Junhui himself following suit, no more than a few inches separating them.

“You, my dear Hao, are going to flirt with me.”

“Ohhhh no,” he responded, trying to get up. Junhui just pulled him back down, though, ignoring Minghao’s protests. “I am not flirting with you, no way.”

“Hao, babe,” Junhui started, moving both his hands up to Minghao’s face so he could cup both of his cheeks and look him dead-on. Junhui leaned forward a little, closing the space between them.

“Flirting is a skill,” the older boy whispered. “And like any skill, you have to practice to get better.”

Junhui pulled his hands back and moved his face away. “And _that_ ,” he added, “was a demonstration.”

“So all I have to do is grab onto Joshua’s face and look deep into his eyes?”

Junhui shook his head. “No, no, no, flirting is more complicated than just doing one thing, Hao. It’s all about the package. Your words have to match your actions which have to match your demeanor. You can’t act cool and pretend to be cool if your words sound all nerdy.”

“... Fine,” Minghao reluctantly agreed. It wasn’t like what Junhui was saying was total bullshit, even if he resented the fact that he needed lessons on flirting.

“Okay, first up are your words. You have the tendency to freeze up when you’re nervous, so I’m gonna try to break you out of that a little.”

“I don’t _always_ freeze u--”

“-- Minghao, I want you to compliment me five different ways.”

Minghao just blankly stared at Junhui, letting the room fall silent.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not, babe. I want you to practice coming up with saying nice things about people. If you can verbalize your compliments, you’re able to woo your crush with no problems. Everybody likes to be praised.”

“Are you sure you don’t just like to be praised?”

“You know, Jeonghan said the same thing last night…”

“Ew, okay, tmi.”

Junhui made an offended face before getting back to business. “Okay, let’s start.”

“Well, uh, you’re caring, confident, aff--”

“No, no, _no_ ,” Junhui interjected. “Those are throwaway compliments. You flirt like a thesaurus. You need to come up with original ideas and then flower them up. Make your target feel special, Hao.”

“Target?” Minghao asked, cocking one eyebrow.

“Crush, whatever,” Junhui dismissively corrected. “Let’s start again.”

“Um, well… Junhui?” he started, looking at all of Junhui’s features. “Your hair is always perfectly-styled.”

“Meh,” Junhui replied. “I’ll take it. One down, four to go.”

“Your eyes are, uh, really soft, and I could definitely get lost in them for a few years.”

“A little nerdy, but okay. Two down.”

“Um, do you model? Because you look like you should. You’ve got the height, the body, the beautiful face…”

“Generic, but getting better. Three down. Don’t always focus on physical features, by the way.”

“I love you’re always thinking about other people and how to make them feel better. You really care about them.”

“One more.”

“You’re great at finding friends who look cuter than you.”

“You little shit!” Junhui shouted, slapping Minghao’s arm. Minghao just started giggling.

“Okay, okay,” he replied through his giggles. “Junhui, I could talk to you for days because you’ve always got something interesting to say.”

“Oh, I like that one,” Junhui answered. “Subtle, not too cheesy, genuine. Good job.”

“Thanks?” Minghao replied. He felt like his compliments were too platonic, but maybe they didn’t all have to be extolling the virtues of sparkly eyes or mad biochemistry props.

“Okay, let’s try again this time but with…” Junhui started, his voice trailing off while he pecked away at his phone. “Him.”

Junhui held up a professional-looking picture of Joshua, who was smiling from ear-to-ear with his perfect looking teeth and crescent-shaped eyes. Minghao could talk for hours about his smile. Not to mention the preppy light-colored button-up that Joshua was wearing in the picture -- it complemented his wispy light-colored hair well.

“Earth to Minghao?”

“Oh, uh, sorry.”

“This should be easy for you,” Junhui said with a wink. It was supposed to be a lighthearted jab, but Minghao couldn’t help but blush a little. He spent all day running through all the reasons why he was crushing hard on Joshua. Surely he could turn those thoughts into words without melting into a puddle, right? He wasn’t that much of a loser, right?

“You’re not gonna tell Joshua any of this, are you?” After all, his crush on Joshua was pretty damning. If Joshua ever found out about this flirting lesson, there was a fairly high chance that Minghao would actually melt into, like, a puddle of embarrassment and feelings. Lots of feelings.

“I would never betray you like that!”

“... Okay,” Minghao muttered. “So, um, I love the way your voice gets higher and you talk faster when you think you’ve done something wrong and want to apologize for it, even though you could never do anything wrong.”

“Gross,” Junhui replied. “Extremely gross, but acceptable. One down.”

Minghao frowned. “You asked!”

“For compliments, not love letters. I didn’t know that this little hopeless romantic existed deep down inside you, though, Hao.”

“Shut up,” he complained. _Maybe you should spend a few minutes in one of my daydreams about Joshua_ , he thought, before immediately nixing that idea, realizing that putting Junhui anywhere near that sort of content would just about end his existence.

“Continue.”

Minghao thought about that one time Joshua wore a lab coat, and how it fit his body type really well. “Extra-long cardigans look amazing on you. You should really wear more of them.”

“Cute. Two down.”

“Even though you know so much more than me about science, you never make me feel dumb. And, um, I really appreciate it.”

“Yawn. Two more, but, like, go back to being romantic. Now that I think about it, Joshua’s probably a hopeless romantic too.”

Shit, is he? Maybe he’d like all these cheesy compliments? Or that Minghao was hopelessly in love?

Minghao shot Junhui a look. “Your eyes literally hold an entire galaxy of stars. I love the way they sparkle under the lights.”

“You really have a thing for eyes, don’t you?”

“I also have a thing for dimples,” Minghao retorted, not breaking character. “And yours make me feel all soft inside.”

Junhui made a disgusted face, letting the Minghao figure out from the silence breaking out between the two of them just how he felt about Minghao’s idea of complimenting Joshua. Honestly, he was a little surprised at how easy it was to turn his smitten thoughts into smitten words, and how easy it was to make Junhui feel oh-so-uncomfortable. Maybe they’d make Joshua into a giggling mess? Minghao was getting soft just thinking of Joshua giggling with no end in sight.

“... I’ve never felt the urge to dry-heave before now, thanks Hao,” Junhui replied, shifting his weight a bit. “You did… great. But I feel like your main problem is that you just kinda lose all of your thoughts around Joshua, so maybe just try practicing giving more compliments in general? Everybody loves hearing nice things about themself, and practicing with random people will make it easier give Joshua compliments when the time comes.”

“Sure.” Minghao feigned agreement, doubting that anything would make him a competent human being around Joshua. Junhui gave him a look, but let the sarcasm slide.

“Let’s move onto flirting,” Junhui said, clasping his hands together and smirking a little. Junhui licked his lips, like this was what he was really looking forward to, like he couldn’t wait to make Minghao suffer.

Oh no.

* * *

  
**To: Junhui | 5:37 pm**

_[ Tap here to see older texts ]_

“And I am never EVER kissing you on the cheek ever again.”

**From: Junhui | 5:38 pm**

“My cheeks are offended!”

**To: Junhui | 5:38 pm**

“They should be!”

**From: Junhui | 5:38 pm**

“Hao.”

“Babe.”

“You needed practice so you practiced with me.”

“It meant nothing :)”

“Except when I tell Jeonghan tonight to make him jealous :)))”

**To: Junhui | 5:39 pm**

“Poor Jeonghan.”

**From: Junhui | 5:39 pm**

“Don’t feel bad for him :)))”

**To: Junhui | 5:40 pm**

“Ew.”

“Anyways… it felt… dirty.”

**From: Junhui | 5:40 pm**

“If that was dirty, then you’re screwed babe.”

“We didn’t even reach third grade school-crush level of intimacy.”

**To: Junhui | 5:44 pm**

“It felt dirty because it was with you, asshole.”

**From: Junhui | 5:46 pm**

“Everything’s dirty with me :)”

**To: Junhui | 5:48 pm**

“DID NOT NEED TO HEAR THAT.”

**From: Junhui | 5:48 pm**

“:)”

**To: Junhui | 5:50 pm**

“How did you even start dating Jeonghan?”

**From: Junhui | 5:52 pm**

“I told him I’d stop flirting with him in the middle of class if he went to a movie with me.”

“And then we went to the movie and we made out.”

“I didn’t stop flirting in class tho :)”

**To: Junhui | 5:53 pm**

“Oh my god.”

**From: Junhui | 5:54 pm**

“Aren’t you glad you’re learning from the master??”

“Oh shit, gotta put the phone down, my honey bear just finished making dinner”

“And it looks like his ass is on the menu tonight :)”

**To: Junhui | 5:56 pm**

“OH MY GOD”

* * *

  
**To: Mingyu | 6:16 pm**

“Hey, can you try not to tease Joshua tomorrow. Junhui said he was still pretty upset after Friday.”

**From: Mingyu | 6:17 pm**

“are you gonna tease him instead? ;)”

“maybe on top of our bench??”

**To: Mingyu | 6:19 pm**

“I’m being serious, Gyu!”

**From: Mingyu | 6:19 pm**

“okay okay fine”

“he’s on top”

**To: Mingyu | 6:20 pm**

“MINGYU.”

“DON’T MAKE ME TEXT WONWOO.”

**From: Mingyu | 6:21 pm**

“no!”

“he’ll punish me again :(“

“the bruises still haven’t healed from last time :(“

“he said it was a lesson on immunology and wound healing :(“

**To: Mingyu | 6:23 pm**

“... I didn’t need to know that.”

“Why do you all tell me the dirty details of your relationships wtf.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

**From: Mingyu | 6:25 pm**

“hao u should start taking notes. for ur new boyfriend”

**To: Mingyu | 6:27 pm**

“Come on, Gyu. He’s definitely not gay for me, which is why he’s so embarrassed right now.”

* * *

  
It was the first Tuesday after the kissing incident, but it felt like several weeks had passed.

Junhui and Mingyu were constantly hounding him about Joshua throughout the day: Mingyu was especially brutal, Junhui less so. Maybe that had to do with all of Mingyu’s texts being about how “spontaneous” his reaction with Joshua was, whereas Junhui texted encouraging, if somewhat troubling, factoids and advice to use on Joshua today. All the attention and jokes and advice had an unfortunate side-effect: Minghao was starting to think that Joshua and him might actually have a shot -- that a relationship between the two of them might actually work out.

Maybe Joshua really did like him? Maybe it wasn’t really platonic? Maybe all the shy smiles and giggling were really because Joshua got shy around Minghao? Maybe Joshua really did want to try to work something out with him? Maybe somebody really did love him?

Clearly, Minghao didn’t believe much in self-confidence, like, as a concept or otherwise. Which is why these thoughts were so damn _weird_. He was never hopeful about himself, especially when it came to love; why did he legitimately believe that he and Joshua might have a shot? He was usually immune to Mingyu being a little shit and pushing for relationships. Junhui seemed awfully determined about getting this to work, too. Junhui had never, ever done that… that _flirting lesson_ , or whatever the hell that was yesterday. Junhui was more of a pat-pat-maybe-next-time sort of friend when it came to Minghao’s relationships. And Mingyu usually gave up at some point. Wonwoo usually didn’t even bother.

What gives?

_And where the fuck was Joshua?_

Minghao had been standing in the middle of their biochemistry lab for like five minutes, and Mingyu was gonna get back with a bucket of ice soon. He was lonely standing at their bench. Where was Joshua? Where was the boy who he planned to unleash a torrent of flirting on? Jeonghan didn’t mention anything about their TA being gone when they walked in. Usually Joshua was either at the front of the teaching lab, waiting for Jeonghan’s pre-lab lecture, or he was prepping reagents and instruments near the edge of the room. Joshua was in neither of those places. Minghao looked around -- everything was already prepped, which was odd.

“Got the ice,” Mingyu reported, setting the bucket down on their bench with a thud.

“Thanks,” Minghao murmured in response, more focused on the lab instructor -- watching as Jeonghan moved to the front of the teaching lab.

“No Joshua today, teach?” Mingyu blurted out, stealing Minghao’s thunder. He shot him a sour look. It wasn’t Mingyu’s job to go butting into his relationship like this.

Friendship. He meant friendship.

“Oh,” Jeonghan replied, looking over at Mingyu, then at Minghao. His expression softened a bit; he looked apologetic, like he knew what the question was really about. “He’s just in the stockroom? Said he had to wrap up some grading during pre-lab.”

Mingyu shrugged and looked over at his lab partner. “There you go.”

Jeonghan started giving his pre-lab lecture, talking about enzyme kinetics and protein visualization or whatever. Minghao viscullatated between paying attention and zoning out, his mind wandering off to think about what Joshua’s fluffy blonde hair smelled like today. Strawberries again? He loved strawberries.

The pre-lab lecture really seemed to drag on today; Minghao decided to doodle in the margins of his lab notebook, drawing little strawberries of varying sizes. If he were a better artist, he’d attempt to draw Joshua -- except maybe not. The TAs looked over their lab notebooks at the end of the semester, and it’d be a little mortifying handing in a portrait of his TA. In Biochemistry lab. He was a man of science, not doodling _or_ ogling.

Minghao sighed. Jeonghan finally stopped droning on and on about the importance of enzyme coupling or whatever, and he freed them to go start working. Minghao immediately started looking around, spotting Joshua in the back of the room. He was doing what he usually did at the start of the lab period: moving from bench-to-bench, checking in with each group. This week, he started at the back, which meant it was gonna be a long-ass ride until Joshua got to he and Mingyu.

“You wanna do the kinetics while I do the protein gel?”

“I hate kinetics, though,” Mingyu protested. He put on his best puppy-dog eyes, trying to look smaller than the very large puppy that he actually was. Mingyu always tried this shit despite having a success rate of approximately 0%. Maybe it worked better on Wonwoo?

Minghao motioned toward Joshua, who was still chatting with the first group. “Do you really wanna be the one to talk to Joshua? Or do you want me to be the one here when he drops by?”

Mingyu groaned. “I really hate kinetics…”

“I know you do,” Minghao muttered, deciding to press his advantage. “But do you really wanna be the competitive inhibitor of the Joshua-Minghao interaction?”

He hated referring to himself in the third person, but it seemed rather effective. Mingyu looked sullen and dejected, admitting defeat. He’d rather suffer through using the spectrophotometer, dealing with the small temperamental aliquot of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, and measuring even smaller quantities of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, than be the sole reason Joshua _didn’t_ talk to Minghao this lab. Not to mention that Junhui would probably kill him if he knew Gyu was the reason Minghao didn’t get to test his new flirting prowess out.

So, Mingyu grabbed what he needed -- a few micropipettes, some mini reaction tubes, and whatever was left of his dignity -- and sauntered off to the edge of the classroom to do the kinetics at the spec. Minghao, meanwhile, focused on setting up the protein gel. He had to grab their purified protein (remember last week? When he did that with Joshua? It felt like ages ago) and start prepping it for the protein gel. Basically, heat it up, throw it in some detergent, and pipet it into the gel. He felt fairly confident that he knew what he was doing. Fortunately, it also gave him something to focus on rather than just sitting there, watching and waiting for Joshua to get to his bench.

When he did look over at Joshua (he just happened to be in the general direction that he was looking, okay), his TA looked… alright? Happy, at least. Minghao watched as Joshua’s lips curled up into his signature cheshire grin, his eyes all-but-disappearing into crescents, dimples forming on each end of his mouth, and… you get the point. He practically jumped when Joshua’s airy, light laugh echoed across the teaching lab, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up at the thought of _that_ laugh being for _him_ soon.

Or so he thought.

He wasn’t paying too much attention to Joshua while he was loading his gel with the protein samples. Minghao noticed when Joshua was talking with the group next to him, the proximity of his lisp-y sweet-sounding voice catching his attention. But a few minutes later, he noticed that Joshua had completely bypassed his bench, disappearing from the group next to him. He looked around the lab space, and his eyes locked on Joshua talking to Mingyu near the spectrophotometers.

Joshua skipped him.

And went straight to Mingyu.

Minghao looked down at his now-running gel and felt all his feelings get bunched up in his throat, like he was choking on all of the pent-up anticipation that had been building for the past hour since walking into lab. Yeah, sure, even yesterday he had been dreading today. But Junhui and Mingyu really amped him up; they made him want to fix things, to talk to Joshua more, to confront that maybe he did have a small crush on his TA.

All of that motivation to talk to Joshua post-kiss melted away as he watched Joshua chatting up a storm with Mingyu on the other side of the lab. They might as well have been on a different planet. Minghao watched as Joshua did all of his usual ticks, holding onto Mingyu’s shoulder with one hand while he was talking to him, smiling and nodding a lot, taking long, thoughtful pauses between sentences. He watched as Mingyu effortlessly talked to Joshua, like they had been old friends who had known each other for years, making Joshua laugh over and over again. He watched as Jeonghan ambled up to them, interrupting the conversation to pull Joshua into the stockroom. He watched as his heart fell into a deep pit in his stomach, slouching onto his lab bench and hopelessly staring at his gel.

Fuck biochemistry.

He glanced back over at Mingyu, who noticed him looking over there. He tried to look away quickly, but Minghao knew that Gyu had caught him. Fuck, he just wanted to leave right now, to never see anybody ever again.

“He said you looked busy,” Mingyu recounted, pulling up his seat next to Minghao’s. “That’s why he went over to talk to me.”

“Since when has us being busy ever stopped him from chatting with us,” Minghao mumbled, not bothering to look up from where his face was planted on the lab bench. It wasn’t really a question, it was a fact-of-life. A fact for which Mingyu didn’t have a satisfying answer.

“Maybe he thought you were a noble gas?” Mingyu tried to joke. Non-reactivity bullshit. It fell flat, though; Minghao was supremely upset.

“Hey,” another voice butted in. Minghao looked up and saw Jeonghan on the other side of their bench, sympathetically looking back at him.

“Hey,” he muttered back. Lab instructor, shmab instructor… he didn’t care about appeasing Jeonghan right now.

“For what it’s worth,” Jeonghan started, “Joshua is still really embarrassed about what happened last week. He said he didn’t feel comfortable talking to you.”

“Oh,” Minghao replied. Jeonghan really wasn’t doing a good job of consoling him, if that was his goal.

“I told him that I’d handle the rest of class, that he could focus on grading. You both won’t have to torture yourselves being in the same room.”

Except that was exactly what he was going to do.

* * *

  
Coffee.

He fucking needed coffee.

It was the only thing that forced him out of bed this morning after skipping his morning class. God, _fuck_ his morning class. After lab yesterday, fuck _all_ of his classes. He didn’t want to go to class ever again. Ever. Again.

Minghao just wanted to get his stupid latte, go back to his stupid room, and hide in his stupid bed. He didn’t even bring his phone, knowing that he’d either have no texts because everyone was too afraid to see how upset he was or that he’d have a million texts and have no energy or willpower to deal with him. He honestly wondered how long he could go dark before Wonwoo or Mingyu or Junhui came knocking on his door, forcing him to stop being a useless waste of space for once.

He probably looked like shit. It wasn’t like he didn’t shower. No, he was at least slightly functional this morning. He just had such a menacing scowl plastered on his face that he figured nobody would dare to cross him in the coffee shop. Not that he was looking for a battle royale, but he kept watching more and more students order coffee, wondering when his order was ever going to be ready, wondering when he could escape back upstairs.

His heart stopped when he noticed a boy with light blonde hair wearing a light gray button-up ordering at the register. It couldn’t be?

The boy turned around, and, sure enough, it was Joshua. In _his_ coffee shop.

Well, not his coffee shop per se, but it was the place he always went to. And he had never seen Joshua here before. Not before today. Not that today was the best day.

Joshua looked around at the mass of students waiting for their drinks before locking eyes with Minghao. He looked shocked as soon as he realized that, yes, it was indeed Minghao; meanwhile, Minghao maintained eye contact, watching to see how Joshua responded. It wasn’t like he could feign not seeing him.

His TA looked around again before deciding to walk toward Minghao. To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t really prepared for this conversation, nor was he dying to have it right now. But it seemed to be unavoidable right now.

“Hey,” Joshua cheerily said. It sounded forced, though, like he spent the whole ten second walk pepping himself up to be happy.

“Hey,” Minghao tersely replied. By contrast, he didn’t even try.

Joshua frowned. “How… how did yesterday’s lab go?”

“Fine,” Minghao replied. He was really not in the mood for this. “Gyu got all of his kinetics data just fine.”

“Yeah, it seemed like he was doing okay when I talked to him,” Joshua answered. He realized immediately afterwards that Minghao did _not_ want to hear that sentence, nervously looking away when Minghao shot him a look. He knew he was being childish, but Joshua was the one who was avoiding him, choosing Mingyu over him. Joshua was the one who wanted to talk to Gyu, not him.

There was an awkward silence festering between the two of them. Minghao knew he could wait it out. He was just so annoyed right now. Annoyed at how Joshua ignored him yesterday, annoyed at how pretty his stupid lips were, annoyed at fucking pedantic and petulant Minghao was being about this whole thing.

“I’m, uh, sorry again about last Friday,” Joshua finally blurted out. “I didn’t mean to, it just kinda happened.”

“You don’t need to keep apologizing for it,” Minghao snapped back. The words themselves weren’t entirely rude, but Minghao’s tone was beyond reproach. Joshua looked a little hurt.

“Right,” the blonde-haired boy replied.

Just then, Minghao’s name was called, and he went to go pick up his coffee and escape from everything. He wanted nothing to do with Joshua.

* * *

  
**To: Junhui | 5:45 pm**

“Jun, I fucked up.”

“I really fucked up.”

**From: Junhui | 5:46 pm**

“What happened??”

**To: Junhui | 5:47 pm**

“I ran into Joshua at the cafe, and I was so pissed about yesterday that I basically told him to leave me alone and I regret everything.”

“I regret everything, Junhui.”

“I just want to go back and talk to him like I planned.”

“But instead of flirting I basically flipped him off.”

**From: Junhui | 5:49 pm**

“Hao :/”

“It’s not your fault”

“You’re allowed to have feelings too”

**From: Junhui | 6:00 pm**

“Hao?”

**From: Junhui | 6:21 pm**

“Hao baby please answer me”

**From: Junhui | 7:03 pm**

“I really hope you’re alright and if you want to talk I’m available tonight.”

“I can walk over to your dorm or you can come stay over at my apartment.”

“I just don’t want you to be alone.”

**To: Junhui | 7:04 pm**

“I’ll always be alone.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry ;_; The final update will be on June 3rd!! (it's already written)


	3. So Maybe He’s a Little Gay For Me?

 

* * *

  
“You’re late,” Junhui scolded. “Again!”

Minghao collapsed onto the empty seat at their table, dropping his featherlight bag onto the ground next to him. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Recently, Minghao had been running late to just about everything. He didn’t think anybody would notice, but apparently getting to lunch thirty minutes after he was supposed to be there was pushing it a little too far. It wasn’t his fault that it was just so hard to get out of bed lately. Right? Everybody has those weeks… months, right?

“Wonwoo’s already on his last sushi roll!” Mingyu complained.

“It’s okay, I’m not hungry.”

Mingyu sighed. He had two plates in front of him: one that was wiped clean and one that had a pile of noodles on it. He slid the plate that looked untouched over to Minghao along with a pair of chopsticks. This had been a pattern for the past three weeks, too -- a basically non-existent appetite. In turn, this led to Minghao having practically no energy, which led to him not wanting to get up and find food. It was a vicious self-fulfilling cycle of lethargy and, honestly, depression.

“It’s _not_ okay,” Wonwoo replied. “It’s been three weeks, Hao.”

“-- We’ve been bankrolling your lunches for three weeks, Hao!”

“Shut up, Gyu,” Wonwoo dismissed, causing Mingyu to look all fake-offended. “The important part is that it’s been three weeks of Mopey Minghao, and we’re ready for you to move on. One way or the other.”

“I’m not moping,” he toothlessly countered. It was a lie, and he knew it. Everybody knew it. He was definitely Mopey Minghao, but he didn’t want to admit it. That would mean that he’d have to confront this… this _boy problem_ that had been eating away at him for what felt like ages.

Mingyu groaned. “You’ve been wearing black for three weeks.”

“I wore gray one day.” He couldn’t help it that all of his other clothes seemed too… happy.

“ _Dark_ gray,” Mingyu protested, slamming his fist on the table somewhat aggressively. “And I’m pretty sure that’s because you ran out of black!”

“Not to mention that you won’t respond to half our texts,” Junhui added. His eldest friend had a concerned look affixed to his face, an expression he didn’t usually see on the carefree-by-nature Junhui. Minghao was sure they had planned to confront him today.

Mingyu started waving his hands around frantically, like Junhui had tripped a nerve here. “And when you do, it’s ‘Okay’ or ‘Sure’ or ‘Sorry’ or some other lame-ass excuse. I’m friends with Minghao, not Google Home!”

“You are friends with Minghao,” he quietly responded. That one actually kinda hurt -- the one that popped his bubble and made him realize that maybe he was being a shitty friend.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Mingyu resisted.

Minghao looked down this time. He felt bad -- really bad. He didn’t want to be like this. He hated himself for being like this. Minghao knew that it affected his friends, but he wanted to pretend that they were okay with it, that they would indefinitely accept that he was in a rough spot. That he could just mope forever.

“Look,” Wonwoo added, bringing Minghao’s attention back to the table, “We love you, Hao. But we also know when we need to force you out of the rut you’re stuck in, and that time is now. You need to start trying to feel better about this, or you’ll never get better.”

“But --”

“No buts, Hao!” Junhui jumped in.

“Yeah, the only butt you’re allowed to have is Joshua’s,” Mingyu responded, looking over at Wonwoo, then Minghao, for approval.

Junhui shook his head. “Not helping.”

Wonwoo placed a hand on Mingyu’s arm, trying to get him to calm down a bit. “We want to help you get better. What can we do to help you?”

Minghao looked down again. He really didn’t want to confront his feelings. He was hoping they would just go away. But he still liked Joshua, he still wanted to spend time with Joshua, he still wanted to be Joshua’s more than anything else -- but he felt like he had fucked up beyond redemption. He could see it in lab. If Joshua had avoided him post-kiss but pre-coffee shop, he was _really_ Avoiding him now. He used to get smiley faces and comments on his lab reports, but now he just got a number, his grade, at the top of the first page. Their relationship was ice-cold, and Minghao wasn’t any better at taking the blow to the heart every Tuesday. Never mind going to office hours on Friday.

“Hao?”

He looked back up, finding three pairs of eyes locked on him, waiting for an answer. Waiting to see how they could help.

“I guess… I guess, I still like him,” Minghao choked out, looking over at Wonwoo. “I go to lab every Tuesday and I still like everything about him. I still look at him and think about how he smells like strawberries and how hearing his laugh makes me smile from ear-to-ear. And it hurts because I feel like I fucked up, and I’m constantly reminded of that.”

After he finished talking, his three friends remained awfully quiet. Mingyu looked like he was deferring to Wonwoo and Junhui. Meanwhile, the older two boys seemed to be locked in their own heads, deciding how best to respond.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you it’s not your fault,” Junhui finally said, breaking the silence. “But it seems like you still don’t believe me.”

“Do you think every relationship is perfect?” Wonwoo asked. Minghao looked over at him and then at Mingyu.

Gyu decided to jump in too. “Yeah, like, if Wonwoo and I were a DNA strand, do you think we’re always a perfect match? There are some mismatches… sometimes there’s a adenine paired with a cytosine. And we have to, like, do some mismatch repair on that shit.”

Minghao sat there slack-jawed, looking at Mingyu like he was an alien. It seemed like Junhui and Wonwoo were doing the same thing because the table was totally silent again.

“Yeah…” Wonwoo slowly replied. “That.”

Mingyu pouted, assuming that his analogy didn’t quite work.

“It’s okay, Gyu, you tried,” Wonwoo added, caressing Mingyu’s thigh under the table. “And that’s what I love about you.”

Mingyu smiled the kind of dorky smile he only had around Wonwoo.

“And one thing that I love about you, Hao, is that you hold yourself to a really high standard,” Wonwoo continued, pivoting back to Minghao’s predicament. “But, damn it, you need to let yourself make mistakes. You were upset, and you said something that you didn’t really wanna say. Do you really think Gyu doesn’t wanna go back in time and, like, not say that DNA mismatch story?”

“Hey!” Mingyu interjected.

“No, he’s gonna pick himself up and do better next time.”

Mingyu crossed his arms, in a cute-angry way that only an oversized puppy could achieve. That earned him an apologetic look from Wonwoo -- and a kiss on the cheek.

“But it’s different if you guys say those sorts of things,” Minghao countered. “You’ve been dating for a few months now. You have something to fix. I don’t have anything with Joshua.”

“That’s a big fat lie!” Gyu shouted. “You guys have great chemistry and a _wonderful_ induced fit.”

“Enough with the biochemistry puns, honey,” Wonwoo instructed.

Junhui pulled Minghao’s attention from the Mingyu-slash-Wonwoo antics happening on one end of the table, reaching over and holding onto Minghao’s arm for dramatic effect.

“Minghao. Babe. Do you really think that Jeonghannie and I started out perfectly? C’mon, you know him, and you know me. How do you think he responded the first ten times I tried flirting with him?”

“He probably told you to fuck off because you made some joke about doing him on the lab bench seven weeks in a row,” Gyu answered before Minghao could say anything.

Junhui shot Mingyu a death glare. “ _No_.”

“But?” Minghao asked.

“But we weren’t a perfect match. There was some miscommunication. He thought I just wanted to be friends with benefits.”

“Wait, you’re not?” Mingyu asked.

“ _No_ , we’re actually dating, you oversized asshole.”

“Hey!” the larger boy objected, tugging on his boyfriend’s sleeve. “Wonwoo, defend my honor.”

Wonwoo sighed. “Mingyu is a perfectly normal-sized asshole.”

Mingyu started pouting. “And as the resident expert on assholes because I’m dating one--”

“-- _Wonwoo_!”

“-- I know for a fact that you, Hao, are indeed not an asshole.”

“He’s right,” Junhui added. “I’ve experienced many assholes and can very much agree that Mingyu is an asshole.”

If Minghao wasn’t so mopey right now, he’d be living for this Mingyu roast right now… And wondering why all his friends were so lewd.

“That joke’s why Jeonghan didn’t start dating you for three months!” Mingyu shouted.

“Boys, behave,” Wonwoo cautioned, pulling Mingyu back down to his seat again. “Minghao, you’re kind and shy and quiet and funny -- being in a bad mood once doesn’t get rid of all of that.”

“I…” Minghao started. “I -- I just don’t believe you. I don’t think Joshua wants anything to do with me anymore.”

“That’s it,” Junhui replied, reaching out and unnecessarily moving Minghao’s head so that they were looking directly at each other. “ _First_ , you’re gonna eat those damn noodles because you’re skinny enough as it is. _Second_ , you’re coming with me because you need to be knocked out of this Mopey Minghao mindset. ASAP.”

“But what if I don’t want to come?” Minghao protested.

“Then I’ll enlist the help of _that_ oversized asshole,” Junhui responded, pointing at Mingyu, “to physically pick you up and drag you to my apartment.”

* * *

  
The walk to Junhui’s apartment was unusually silent -- partly because Minghao went willingly (so no Mingyu) and partly because Junhui was focused on his phone the whole way. He tried to sneak a peek at who his friend was texting, but Junhui moved his phone away and gave him a disapproving look.

Minghao felt a little sick; Mingyu made sure that he ate the entire giant plate of noodles, which was more food than he’d had in the past two days combined. It didn’t help that Junhui’s silence was making him uneasy. Was this another flirting lesson? He didn’t want to flirt. He just wanted to go to bed.

They eventually made it to Junhui’s front door, and Junhui finally put his phone away, aggressively opening the door and shoving Minghao inside. Junhui wasn’t far behind, locking the door behind him. By the time Minghao stopped being peeved by Junhui literally pushing him into his apartment, he noticed that they weren’t alone: perched on one of Junhui’s couches was Jeonghan, who was sitting cross-legged and obviously expecting both of them. So _that’s_ who Junhui was texting.

“Hey,” Jeonghan lazily opened; Minghao was unsure if it was for him or for Junhui. Maybe both. Either way, Jeonghan looked comfortable, wearing sweats and a T-shirt, unlike his usual collared button-up shirt and jeans.

“You brought me all the way here for Jeonghan?” he indignantly asked. He knew it was a little rude, but Junhui made him walk all the way here for his lab instructor. What the fuck?

“I dragged your sorry ass here for Joshua’s friend, Jeonghan.”

Junhui finished pulling off his shoes, grabbed Minghao by the collar of his shirt, and forced him over to one of the couches in his living room. Those extra inches that Junhui had on him made it easy enough for his older friend to toss him around, a habit that Minghao resented.

“Rude,” Jeonghan piped up, shifting his weight. “I’m also your boyfriend, dickwad.”

“Sorry, babe,” Junhui replied, planting a kiss on Jeonghan’s cheek before sitting next to him on the other couch. “But we’ve gotta convince this mopey emo boy to stop wallowing for long enough to realize that he’s being stupid.”

“I’m _not_ emo, I --”

“-- Right,” Jeonghan agreed, cutting Minghao off. “I got your texts.”

“ _Clearly_ , considering you replied.”

“Damn,” Jeonghan tutted, turning his attention to Minghao. “What’d you do to piss him off so much?”

“I didn’t do an --”

“-- He won’t stop whining about Joshua,” Junhui interrupted, his attention focused on Jeonghan. It was like they were talking around him.

“And I’m starting to get _very_ annoyed that he doesn’t realize how much Joshua loves him.”

“He doesn’t--”

“-- To be fair,” Jeonghan started, glancing over at Junhui, “he hasn’t heard what Joshua has had to say about him.”

“There’s no wa--”

“-- And just what has he been saying, babe?” Junhui moved one of his hands to Jeonghan’s thigh, lightly massaging small circles through his sweatpants. Minghao might as well have been invisible.

“I’m still here! And--”

“-- _Well_ ,” Jeonghan answered, eyes fluttering a bit as he leaned into Junhui’s body. “You can’t tell Minghao, but Joshua was pretty upset after seeing him in the campus coffee shop a few weeks ago. Something about feeling like Minghao didn’t like him.”

“See! I tol--”

“-- Oh? But why would he care what Minghao thought about him?”

“Have you been living under a rock, sweetie?” Jeonghan sweetly asked. “Every day since the start of the semester, he’s asked me about the cute gay boy at the front of the room with the loud lab partner. When he found out that _you_ were friends with him -- well, I feel like I’ve been playing telephone with how much I’ve had to tell him about Minghao based on what you’ve said.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ why you’ve been asking so much about him,” Junhui replied, moving his hand up to Jeonghan’s hair. He started threading his fingers through Jeonghan’s caramel-brown hair, both of them _still_ acting like Minghao wasn’t there.

But, _more importantly_ , Joshua was asking about him? Every day?

“And here I thought you were gonna dump me for Minghao,” Junhui added, pouting a bit.

“ _Never_ ,” Jeonghan replied, craning back to peck Junhui on the cheek. “He’s a little whiny for me.”

“Hey, I’m right h--”

“-- Good,” Junhui cooed. “Has Joshua been asking about Minghao the past few weeks?”

“Even more than usual,” Jeonghan murmured. “He’s been so worried, and he feels really guilty about what happened. He feels like he screwed everything up when he kissed Minghao on the lips in office hours.”

“Oh, so it _wasn’t_ an accident?” Junhui asked, using his best gossip-y voice. It was like was trying to be even gayer than usual, really cranking up his lisp and expressions.

“Of course not. Do you think pure and innocent Joshua would even think about kissing someone he wasn’t crushing hard for?”

“It -- it wasn’t an accident?” Minghao choked out. He felt stiff.

“That explains why he’s so upset,” Junhui continued, leaning back into Jeonghan.

“Right. He’s still crushing on Minghao, but he feels like Minghao wants nothing to do with him. And he’s too scared to talk to him.”

“I see,” Junhui flatly replied, still playing with Jeonghan’s hair but lazily moving his gaze from Jeonghan to a petrified Minghao. “ _I wonder what Minghao will do about that._ ”

* * *

  
**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:11 pm**

“So… I’m going to talk to Joshua tomorrow at office hours.”

**From: Mingyu | 4:11 pm**

“YES”

“FINALLY”

“GO COLLECT YOUR FUTURE BOYFRIEND”

**From: Wonwoo | 4:12 pm**

“Calm down. You’re probably making minghao nervous”

**From: Junhui | 4:13 pm**

“I agree w the asshole”

**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:15 pm**

“I was already nervous but thanks.”

“I have no idea what to say.”

“Or do.”

**From: Mingyu | 4:16 pm**

“have u tried i love u”

“or half the other gross shit u pined about last month”

**From: Junhui | 4:17 pm**

“How the hell did you convince wonwoo to date you?”

**From: Mingyu | 4:18 pm**

“hes a hoe for persistence”

**From: Junhui | 4:19 pm**

“Hao just tell him how you feel.”

“And apologize.”

**From: Wonwoo | 4:20 pm**

“Maybe bring him a coffee?”

**From: Junhui | 4:22 pm**

“Ooo, jeonghannie likes that idea”

“He says that joshua loves caramel macchiatos”

**From: Mingyu | 4:23 pm**

“sorry wonwoo took away my phone”

“wow u both like frilly coffees”

“with lots of foam ;)”

**From: Wonwoo | 4:25 pm**

“I took away his phone again”

**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:26 pm**

“How do I apologize tho?”

**From: Wonwoo | 4:27 pm**

“well sucking him off again would be a good start”

“this is mingyu btw”

**From: Junhui | 4:28 pm**

“Like we couldn’t tell”

“Jeonghannie says you just going to office hours will be enough to make him basically break down and start crying”

“He’ll be a Soft Gay Boy”

**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:30 pm**

“Omg, I don’t want to make him cry.”

**From: Junhui | 4:32 pm**

“Then just tell him all the things you like about him”

“Flirt :)”

“Flirt like his life depends on it :)”

“Because it does :)”

“If this doesn’t work out I’m gonna kill him :)”

**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:35 pm**

“...”

“Oookay.”

**To: Junhui, Mingyu, Wonwoo | 4:40 pm**

“What happened to Wonwoo and Gyu?”

**From: Junhui | 4:43 pm**

“Probs got all handsy fighting over their phones”

**From: Mingyu | 5:32 pm**

“thats exactly what happened”

**From: Wonwoo | 5:33 pm**

“shut up and get back in here”

**From: Mingyu | 5:34 pm**

“yessir”

* * *

  
Minghao’s hand hovered over the doorknob.

He wanted to grab the damn thing and twist it open, but something was stopping him. This was his third try in the past hour; damnit, he just wanted the door to open for him, for the door to have the balls that he didn’t have. Every time his hand came within a fraction of an inch of the doorknob, he paused, he waited, and he scurried back to the bench across the hallway that had been his home for the past forty-five minutes.

This time was no different.

His _original_ plan was to get here right at 4 pm and surprise Joshua in the study room. After a series of unfortunate events and repeated chickening-out, it was now 4:55 pm and Joshua’s office hour was gonna end in five minutes. Joshua’s coffee -- which was the original source of his delay -- was lukewarm, at best. It took him ten minutes to find Junhui’s text with Joshua’s usual order, and then another ten minutes to wait in line (At 4 pm? What the fuck, people?). When he finally got the study room’s door, he kept cycling through bouts of self-doubt and whiffs of motivation. The doubt always won out with Minghao sauntering back to his bench.

_Fuck it, he needed to man up._ Jeonghan made it clear that Joshua liked him, and he liked Joshua, and the only thing between them was this goddamn door.

Minghao got up, stormed toward the door, and aggressively turned the knob to swing the door open.

Joshua was seated at the far end of the table near the whiteboard, as usual, and he shot up when the door flew open. His nose must’ve been buried in his laptop or something, but now he was totally fixated on Minghao. Joshua looked like he was in shock, his eyes widening precipitously and his eyelashes fluttering as he blinked in rapid succession.

_Fuck_ , his eyelashes.

“Ming… hao?” Joshua breathed after the door behind Minghao clicked shut on its own. For someone who had spent forty-five minutes preparing for this interaction, Minghao really had no idea how this was gonna go or what he was gonna say. Especially now that his TA-slash-crush was right in front of him.

“Um,” he mumbled. “Hi?”

Real smooth, Minghao. Smoother than the smooth endoplasmic reticulum, really.

“Hi?” Joshua replied. He leaned back slightly in his seat, his line-of-sight unwaveringly locked on Minghao. Meanwhile, Minghao walked around the study table, pulling out a chair near Joshua. He didn’t sit down, though.

“Are you… are you here for office hours?”

“No,” Minghao quickly answered. He realized that his reply might have been too aggressive, so he immediately looked down, blurting out the next thought that popped into his head.

“I’m here for you,” he whispered.

Joshua gasped. He fucking _gasped_. If that wasn’t the most adorable shit ever --

“If this is about a few weeks ago,” his TA started, nervously running his hand through his hair while his words ran out of his mouth, ambling one after the other quickly and with no break, “I’m so sorry, Minghao. I didn’t mean to, my emotions just got the best of me, and I just leaned forward --”

“-- Joshua.”

“-- And one thing led to the other and then my lips were on yours and I’m so sorry because you didn’t ask for that and I understand if you never wanna see me ever again after today because honestly it’s all my fault and I should’ve never --”

“-- _Joshua_.”

“-- I should’ve never, ever done that to you because it’s just so inappropriate and you probably hate me because of it and I feel so bad --”

“-- _Joshua!_

This time, Joshua actually stopped. His gaze snapped back up to Minghao’s eyes after drifting downward toward the floor. Every time Joshua looked at him, Minghao could feel himself falling in love all over again, all his words getting bunched up in his throat.

“I’m, um, not mad?”

Joshua sat there motionless. His lips were slightly parted and his formerly-fidgety hands were stilled. After a few awkward seconds of silence, Joshua swallowed hard and spoke again.

“So… so you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive you about?” Minghao couldn’t help but reply in questions. He just thought the idea of Joshua apologizing for _anything_ so completely and utterly out of the question because that implied Joshua could do any wrong. It just wasn’t true. There was no way it was true.

“There’s… not?”

_No, silly, because you’re perfect_.

Minghao shyly laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. He didn’t know where all this confidence was coming from, even if he mangled the delivery.

“If anyone should apologize, it’s me,” he admitted. “For treating you so badly in the cafe a few weeks ago. I’m sorry, I was just so upset because I wanted to talk to you so badly in lab, and… and you skipped me because I was busy, and I felt like shit. And… and I kinda took it out on you, and I’m sorry I made you upset.”

“You… you’re sorry?” Joshua murmured.

“Y-yeah,” Minghao choked out. “I just, uh, feel really bad?”

“You’re not mad about the kiss?”

“No!” Minghao shouted, scaring himself a little with how aggressive his response was. “IActuallyWouldn’tMindIfYouKissedMeAgain.”

“What?”

“N-nothing!” Minghao blatantly lied, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “I actually, um, really like you?”

Joshua didn’t reply immediately, probably wondering why _Minghao said that like it was a fucking question again_. If Joshua were an exam, Minghao would certainly be failing.

“I really like you!” he blurted out. “I really like how your voice sounds like honey, and I smile every time I hear it. I like when you lean really close to me because then I can notice how your hair smells like strawberries. I like when you start rambling on and on about an apology even though you have nothing to apologize for because it’s just so? Cute? And not to mention how your smile makes my heart flutter and how your eyes look like they hold all the stars.”

Minghao finally stopped himself. He tried to calm his fast breathing, his hyperventilating, but looking back at Joshua just made him feel out-of-breath again -- like he couldn’t breathe until Joshua responded to his ham-handed flirting. He looked down at his hands and noticed the room-temperature coffee he was still holding.

“And I brought you coffee to say sorry,” Minghao quickly added, putting the coffee down next to Joshua’s laptop.

Joshua didn’t care about the coffee.

Nope, instead the blonde-haired boy practically _leapt_ out of his chair, flinging himself at Minghao and wrapping his arms around Minghao’s torso abruptly. He was immediately overwhelmed by the feeling of Joshua’s dainty hands wrapped around his chest, the sweet scent of strawberries flooding his senses, and the soft giggling coming from Joshua himself.

“I -- I like you too,” Joshua hummed. “A lot.”

Minghao liked the feeling of Joshua’s hugging him, his head perched on his shoulder.

“You… you like me?”

“Yes,” Joshua whispered.

“And I like you?”

“I think so.”

Apparently it was Minghao’s turn to ask stupid questions.

“Does this mean…?”

Joshua leaned back, hovering in front of Minghao, hands still wrapped around Minghao’s waist. He smiled sweetly and leaned forward, pecking Minghao on the lips again.

“It means my ears _weren’t_ lying to me when you said you wanted another kiss!”

Minghao giggled. The light, carefree giggle that he hadn’t heard from himself in ages. He loved Joshua.

“It also means,” Joshua added, locking one of his hands with Minghao’s, “That I’m dragging you home to make you dinner.”

* * *

  
“Tris buffer,” Mingyu instructed.

“Tris buffer,” Minghao repeated, searching their lab bench for the bottle with an orange cap. His eyes darted all over, searching every inch of their workspace for the elusive run-of-the-mill buffer.

“Tris buffer, tris buffer, tris buffer,” he kept repeating to himself. “Aha!”

Minghao held up the orange-capped clear glass bottle… that was completely empty. He frowned.

“Hand it over,” Gyu replied, focused on not screwing up his pipetting.

“It’s, uh, empty.”

“What?” his lab partner shouted. “How? Did you drink it?”

“Shut up,” Minghao countered, lightly punching Mingyu’s non-pipetting arm. “I’ll just ask Shua to get us more.”

“ _Shua?_ ” Mingyu mocked. “You already have a pet name for him? It’s been three fucking days, Hao.”

“You came up with it!” he hissed, turning his attention back to looking around the lab for their TA. His boyfriend. The cute one with blonde hair. He finally gave up, shouting his TA’s name -- _no_ , not his pet name -- to make Joshua come to him.

Out of nowhere, Minghao felt a light hand press against his back, earning an instant smile from his smitten little ass. God, he was so whipped.

“What’s up, baby,” Joshua whispered, barely loud enough for Minghao and apparently Mingyu to hear.

“Oh my _god_ , you guys are so--”

“-- Shua, we’re out of Tris buffer.”

“-- _gross_ ,” Mingyu finished.

Joshua frowned. “Well, we can’t have that. There should be more aliquots in the stockroom. Do you want to come with me and find it?”

His boyfriend ruffled his hair and started heading toward the stockroom. Meanwhile, Mingyu scoffed.

“Right. You gonna _find_ his lips too?”

“You’re just jealous I’m getting some action in lab,” Minghao challenged before escaping Mingyu’s surely indignant response

Minghao snaked his way through lab, following Joshua to the stockroom. He definitely was not staring at how Joshua’s tight skinny jeans nicely hugged his butt -- no way. He was a man of science, not just ass-ogling.

Once they were in the stockroom, Joshua flipped on the lights and went straight for where the Tris was. So much for “finding” it, huh? It didn’t take long for Minghao to realize that the finding-the-Tris-buffer part of their little adventure wasn’t the real reason Joshua took him back here. Nope, Joshua pulled a hesitant Minghao in close, grabbed onto his lower waist, spun him around so his back was against the counter, and placed a soft kiss on his lips again. This one was long but chaste -- a sweet, boyfriend-y case that just exuded the essence of Shua.

“God, do you know how hard it is to go three-and-a-half hours being _around_ you but not actually being able to kiss you or hug you?”

Minghao’s heart skipped a beat. Joshua knew exactly how to make him feel all shy and loved and bubbly and shit. His boyfriend, meanwhile, moved his hands from the back of his torso to the front, hooking his fingers in the belt loops of Minghao’s pants.

“You know,” Joshua purred, “I had to dump your buffer in the trash when you weren’t looking just so I could drag you in here and show you how much I love you.”

If Minghao wasn’t blushing before, he definitely was blushing now.

“I love you,” he cooed, moving his hand up to Minghao’s face to gently brush his cheek. Joshua may have been struggling for three-and-a-half hours of no-PDA-with-Minghao, but Minghao was struggling with three-and-a-half minutes of so-much-PDA-with-Joshua.

“I love you, too,” Minghao shyly whispered. He looked down and away -- he felt like they were gonna get in trouble, that Jeonghan or Mingyu or someone else was gonna pop in and catch them fooling around in the stockroom. It was exciting: like schoolyard crush meets puppy love. He didn’t want the feeling to go away, even if he wasn’t so comfortable with all the feelings yet.

Joshua frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“N-nothing,” he lied before quickly correcting himself. “I’m just worried we’ll get caught.”

Joshua slyly giggled, a little glimmer of lust crossing his expression. “Jeonghan suggested the stockroom,” he explained.

He didn’t know whether that made him feel better or worse. Actually, it made him feel both. It made him wonder whether Junhui and Jeonghan had done the same thing. But, shit, at least Jeonghan wasn’t gonna walk in and interrupt them. While Minghao was off musing about Junhui sucking Jeonghan’s face off in this room last year, Joshua was clearly thinking of something else.

His boyfriend moved his hand back, holding the back of Minghao’s head while leaning in and planting his lips on Minghao’s. This kiss was anything _but_ chaste, with Joshua’s lips asking for more and more; Minghao was more than willing to oblige, letting Joshua tilt his head so that he had a better angle, so that they fit together like puzzle pieces. Like a goddamn _induced fit_ or whatever. He wrapped his arms around Joshua, moving his body in closer. Even when they were kissing -- actually _kissing_ \-- Joshua was nothing but sweet, taking the whole thing nice and slow to start with, and speeding up as Minghao started to feel all pliant, like he’d do anything that Shua’s lips asked. He loved how Joshua’s lip tasted just like how his voice sounded: sweet, light, and airy, like he was kissing a cloud of cotton candy.

In what felt like ages later, Joshua finally broke the kiss off, still hovering right next to Minghao’s lips, his boyfriend's hot breaths ghosting over his cheeks. Joshua smiled, his usual cheshire-like grin accompanied by a slight tinge of accomplishment. He was probably admiring just how fucked up Minghao was by that whole… _thing_ that just happened, that kiss that he had apparently been planning for the past hour without telling Minghao. Moments later, Minghao felt Joshua move his hand from him to the counter next to them, placing a small orange-capped bottle in Minghao’s hand and curling his fingers around it for him.

Minghao wordlessly nodded before stealing another quick kiss on the lips from Joshua. Before Joshua even knew what had happened, Minghao was halfway out the door and making his way back to a Very Annoyed Mingyu.

“Done sucking your boyfriend’s face off?” Mingyu snarked while Minghao handed him the new tube of Tris buffer.

“You’re lucky I didn’t suck his test tube, too.”

* * *

  
**To: Shua <333 | 2:03 pm**

“So what was that?”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:17 pm**

“Some mid-lab encouragement :)”

**To: Shua <333 | 2:17 pm**

“Oh.”

“Well I definitely felt encouraged :)”

“To keep thinking about how soft your lips were :)”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:18 pm**

“M i n g h a o”

“You’re too sweet for me :(“

**To: Shua <333 | 2:18 pm**

“Omg was my cherry lip-balm too much”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:19 pm**

“No bb you’re perfect <3 <3 <3”

“I just meant that you’re too good for me”

**To: Shua <333 | 2:20 pm**

“Oh well that’s *definitely* not true.”

“Because you’re definitely too good for me :’)”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:21**

“Hao bb Ilu <3”

**To: Shua <333 | 2:22 pm**

“I love you mooooooore”

“Btw Junhui said he wants to get lunch with us tomorrow at noon.”

“He said Jeonghan will be there.”

“And probably Mingyu and his boyfriend.”

“Do you wanna come?”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:23 pm**

“Ahhh, I’m busy then”

**To: Shua <333 | 2:23 pm**

“:(“

**From: Shua <333 | 2:24 pm**

“Yeah I’m booked solid tomorrow with ‘Loving Minghao’ all day”

**To: Shua <333 | 2:24 pm**

“Omg”

**From: Shua <333 | 2:25 pm**

“Of course I’ll come boo <3”

* * *

  
“ _But what if they don’t like me?_ ” Shua whined-slash-asked for the fifth time in the past ten minutes.

Minghao lovingly rolled his eyes. He had decided at least, like, _five_ minutes ago that getting to their triple lunch date this early probably wasn’t the best idea. Joshua had been obsessed with the completely impossible and unrealistic scenario that the other four -- two of whom he already knew! -- were going to hate him.

It was ridiculous.

Shua was ridiculous.

Minghao was ridiculously in love.

Joshua was still sitting there, expectantly waiting for a sweet-nothing to quell his concern. Minghao decided to answer with a kiss to his cheek instead of more words. Clearly words weren’t gonna work. One thing that Minghao had quickly learned about his boyfriend is that he’d get into these adorable moods where he became inconsolable until Minghao calmed him down with some sort of affection: cuddling, hugging, kissing, whatever. Hopefully a kiss would do.

“Gross!” Junhui’s lilting voice teased, hovering over their table with his hands locked with Jeonghan. “Dating for four days and already onto PDA.”

Jeonghan snorted. “Says the boy who insisted on unrequited PDA and flirting for four months _before_ we even started dating.”

Meanwhile, Joshua was still singularly consumed by the idea that Junhui hated him, squeezing Minghao’s hand. “I told you they’d hate me!”

“He literally _doesn’t_ ,” Minghao insisted, squeezing his boyfriend’s hand back. “Right, Junhui?”

“I don’t know, babe,” Junhui demurred, glancing at Minghao then Joshua with a concerned look. He immediately broke character and smiled widely, focusing on Joshua: “Just kidding, Baby Hao’s said too many lovey-dovey things about you for me to possibly hate you. I’m Junhui, Minghao’s Gay Dad.”

Minghao and Jeonghan both immediately scoffed at the idea while Joshua tilted his head and smiled a little. “I’m Joshua, but I guess you already knew that?” he replied, his tone a little unsure.

“I am most certainly _not_ in charge of that little shit in any sort of paternal capacity,” Jeonghan protested.

“Minghao’s _Single_ Gay Dad,” Junhui corrected, not missing a beat.

“Dads, stop fighting,” Minghao joked.

“Yes, son~” Junhui hummed. Jeonghan looked extremely displeased with this turn of events -- well, until Junhui noticed and kissed him on the cheek, melting Jeonghan’s displeasure a little bit.

Joshua, meanwhile, looked extremely amused by this turn of events. “I’ve heard so much about you, Junhui,” he lilted.

“Good things, I hope?” Junhui replied, eyes darting from Joshua to Jeonghan.

“Mostly,” Joshua replied.

“ _Mostly?_ ” Junhui repeated, shooting a death-glare Jeonghan’s direction, who looked away not-so-innocently.

“Yeah, Jeonghan said something about how you sleep-talk? And morning breath?”

“ _I said no such thing_ ,” Jeonghan weakly countered, still not looking in Junhui’s direction.

Junhui wasn’t having any of it, his hand unlocking from Jeonghan’s and moving straight to his hips for a Sassy Gay Pose. “I only have morning breath because I’m sucking _someone_ off. But I guess not tonight.”

“Junhui, honey, baby, no, I didn--”

“HEY EVERYBODY,” Mingyu’s loud, booming voice interrupted. Minghao turned his attention to the last duo just in time to catch the end of Wonwoo’s eye roll. Sometimes he wondered how Wonwoo put up with all of… Mingyu, in general.

“Before Mingyu starts screaming about everything,” Wonwoo started. “Maybe we should go get some food?”

The four of them just nodded, hastily leaving Wonwoo and his slightly-disappointed oversized boyfriend at the table to unload their belongings. Joshua and him decided to get sushi today; they’d split a larger order so they could get some variety. It didn’t take long for Minghao to realize that Joshua _loved_ California rolls, so it was decided (Minghao decided) that half their order would be California rolls and the other half would be a mish-mash of other rolls. He was really surprised how quickly he got used to life with a +1.

The two of them got back to the table around the same time as everybody else, meaning that Gyu was now free to be his entire Extra self -- at Minghao’s expense, of course.

“So,” Mingyu started, tossing his noodles (yes, he always got noodles) with his chopsticks. “I have an announcement to make about the new couple.”

“Oh god,” Minghao groaned, his head collapsing into Joshua, who happily accepted his ridiculousness.

“I just wanted everyone here to know that on the very first day of Biochemistry Lab, Minghao and I were walking to class, and I was talking how I was going to slave over finding him a boyfriend in our class. And, on the way there, my best friend Hao, who I love more dearly than anything in the world, said he wanted to find a new lab partner. I was hurt! Devastated, actually. My best friend? Saying that nothing would work out because of me!”

Minghao could feel his soul leaving his body, listening to Mingyu’s _completely inaccurate_ recollection of how this all played out.

“But I stuck it out because I wanted Minghao to find his one true love. And look! The very first boy I suggested to him in class, our TA Joshua, is now his loving boyfriend. I don’t want to take credit for their relationship, but I was an instrumental catalyst in getting this whole thing to work, just saying.”

After Mingyu finished his speech, everybody sat there in stunned silence.

“Awww,” Junhui finally let out. “You’re such a good friend.”

Joshua nodded in agreement, causing Minghao to make some inhuman noise in protest, shooting up from his position nuzzled in Joshua’s chest to strenuously object to everything that just was said.

“Gyu is full of shit!” he raved, waving an accusatory finger at his best friend. “First off, I noticed my Shua before this asshole even realized who he was. Secondly, I said that _maybe_ I didn’t want to be his lab partner because he didn’t read the lab manual before class! And lastly, this dickwad didn’t do anything but make lewd biochemistry puns for the past month. _Just saying_.”

Mingyu immediately looked scandalized, but the rest of the table cracked up in laughter. Joshua, who was still giggling, pulled Minghao back down from his half-up/half-seated aggressively accusatory position and let Hao fall back down into his chest, lovingly playing with his hair.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! Thank you so much for reading this far!! I had a great time writing this fic because it gave me a chance to throw some sciencey-nerdiness in but also keep it lighthearted and fun. I hope you also had fun reading it <33 It's honestly weird to have it all be over (even tho I've had this chapter done for like three weeks lol) because this was such a huge project compared to what I'm used to~ 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are super appreciated, and you're welcome to check out my [Tumblr](http://shuuvee.tumblr.com) if you want :D


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